Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett is my history crush because he is, in essence, awesomeness incarnate. During the Great War, he directed artillery striked via ouija board, and arrested Winston Churchill on suspicion that he was a spy. Before the war, he went on surveying expeditions in South America, and refused to shoot back at angry natives-instead, he’d swim across the river and talk to them, and they, befuddled by the mad white guy, would stop shooting. Towards the presumed end of his life, he thought he knew where El Dorado was. T.E. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia, asked to come along for that particular adventure, but Fawcett declined, saying he didn’t think Lawrence was up to it.

Fawcett vanished into the jungle in 1925, and was never seen again.