Friday, July 12, 2013

Is This the Most Interesting Opening Paragraph Wikipedia's Ever Published?


Most Interesting Man in the World, meet your match.

On Sunday, Twitter user Matthew Barrett created something of a sensation by linking to the obscure Wikipedia biography of the British army officer Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart. His tweet -- "This guy surely has the best opening paragraph of any Wikipedia biography ever" -- has been retweeted more than 3,200 times over the past several days.
 
So just how mind-blowing is the introduction on Carton de Wiart's page? Judge for yourself:
Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart[1] VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO (5 May 1880 - 5 June 1963), was a British Army officer of Belgian and Irish descent. He fought in the Boer War, World War I, and World War II, was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip and ear, survived a plane crash, tunneled out of a POW camp, and bit off his own fingers when a doctor wouldn't amputate them. He later said "frankly I had enjoyed the war." [2]
On Twitter, some are simply in awe, while others are pointing out that the rest of the bio is pretty stellar too:

4 comments:

  1. The article says he was shot in the groin during WWII. What it doesn't say is that brass is bullet proof.

    Ironically, today he would be discharged for being "disabled" from wounds received in his first war.

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