5 People Who Ruled At Things They Had No Right to Even Try

By the end of day two, Cliff was not only markedly less dead than everyone expected, but had a sizeable lead on his competitors. This was largely due to his coach/insane friend Wally Zeuschner who, after an exhausting first day of running, accidentally set Cliff's alarm clock for 2AM. For the remainder of the race, Wally was right there, informing Cliff that sleep was for pussies, and hacking off foot blisters with a rabbit knife. When Cliff shuffled his way into Melbourne, he wasn't just ahead of his competitors -- he was miles and miles ahead, having knocked a good two goddamned days off the previous record for the course.

Cliff passed away at the age of 81, but his influence on the sport is still evident today. In order to eke out the maximum possible performance, ultramarathoners now go to bed later, get up earlier, and run in an odd gait that makes them look like fitness zombies.

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A native New Zealander, Nigel won his national title before going on to land European, North American, and world titles as well. And that's no mean feat, considering the first time he played the game, he was 28 years old. So where does a World Champion go, once he's utterly dominated the English-speaking Scrabble scene? Why, he moves on to another language, of course. Even if he doesn't speak it.

In 2015, Nigel easily took the French world title with a score of 565-434 over the Scrabble-nightmare-named Schelick Ilagou Rekawe, and he did it without knowing a lick of French.

How is that even possible? Simply put: Nigel is a mutant. That's ... that's really the only explanation. In preparation for the tournament, he just picked up the French Scrabble dictionary and memorized the words. All of them. He may not have had a clue what the vast majority of them meant, but he could play 'em. And he did. And he won. And that's not humanly possible, so Sentinels are already on the way to his house.

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The jewels of Ray's collection are a pterosaur track so large that it topples the previously accepted size of the beasts, and the teensy hatchling footprints of a species Ray personally dubbed Hypsiloichnus marylandicus. That's just one of several dinosaurs in his collection that the Smithsonian doesn't even have bones for yet.

So why hasn't some institution awarded Ray an honorary doctorate, and put his skills to official use? Possibly because all this paleontology business is just a side gig to his true passion: spotting UFOs.

Yep, that'll do it.

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This was back in the day when, in order to make a telephone call, a caller first spoke to an operator, who in turn connected them to their party. As it turns out, the upstart undertaker was married to an operator at the local phone company. When callers rang up and asked to be connected to Strowger's Crematorium Emporium, she'd simply connect them to her husband's place instead. Obviously, this villainous scheme required a solution, and for that, Strowger had to tap his spirit animal: Wile E. Coyote.

As a child, Strowger was quite the inventor, whipping up complicated contraptions to get out of doing chores. So he decided that the telecommunications industry really needed a way for callers to directly connect to one another, thereby eliminating the middleman (and tossing a certain asshole operator straight out onto the street), and got to work.

With some help from his nephew, and backing from a few business partners, Strowger developed a working prototype of the Strowger switch. He patented the invention in 1891. In 1892, he established his very own telephone company in La Porte, Indiana. Though Strowger would eventually return to the undertaking biz in 1902, his device would revolutionize telecommunications forever. And that, boys and girls, is how the spirit of vengeance invented your iPhone.

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He cheated his way into a teaching gig, where he was well-loved by his high school students -- for them, social-studies class meant tossing the textbook aside and participating in an impromptu discussion, what's suspicious about that?! -- and he generally got away with it. Then one night, the jig was up. As John "read" a children's story to his kids, his wife listened in. She realized he was just making shit up as he went along, and called him out on it. He has since pursued tutoring, and worked through his illiteracy. Hell, he's even authored two books on the subject. Truly, it's an inspiring tale. You can cheat your way through anything!

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