Major Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard, DSO, MC, FRGS, FZS was the most interesting man in the world:
Major Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard, DSO, MC, FRGS, FZS (17 November 1876 – 14 June 1922) was an explorer, adventurer, big-game hunter and marksman who made a significant contribution to sniping practice within the British Army during the First World War. Concerned not only with improving the quality of marksmanship, the measures he introduced to counter the threat of German snipers were credited by a contemporary with saving the lives of over 3,500 Allied soldiers.
During his lifetime, he also explored territory never seen before by white man, played cricket at first-class level, including on overseas tours, wrote short stories and novels (one of which was turned into a Douglas Fairbanks film) and was a successful newspaper correspondent and travel writer. His many activities brought him into the highest social and professional circles. Despite a lifetime’s passion for shooting, he was an active campaigner for animal welfare and succeeded in seeing legal measures introduced for their protection.
He was born in India and raised by his mother, because his father died six weeks before he was born. He went by the nickname “Hex” throughout his life. He created the first fictional psychic detective, Flaxman Low.
He wrote Where Black Rules White: A Journey Across and About Hayti. He sought the long-extinct giant ground sloth in Patagonia.
And then, at age 37, he found his way to the trenches, where he trained snipers.
Stay thirsty, my friend.
His book on sniping in the trenches and others are on the Internet Archive.
Lt Colonel John Blashford-Snell, discoverer of the Double Nosed Andean Tiger Hound and carrier of church organs to Bolivia, is pretty interesting too.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6940289.stm
http://www.johnblashfordsnell.org.uk/6.html
Yet the honor of having the best opening paragraph on Wikipedia, at-least according to Boing Boing, goes to Adrian Carton de Wiart:
“Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO (5 May 1880–5 June 1963), was a British Army officer of Belgian and Irish descent. He served in the Boer War, First World War and Second World War, 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 refused to amputate them. He later said, Frankly I had enjoyed the war.”