Astounding

This tale of swashbuckling derring-do sounds like it's straight out of a little adventurer's imagination, and although Alexandre Dumas made the most of his father's heroics in the writing of his famous books, his dad was the real McCoy. Born in Saint-Domingue 1762, his predicted trajectory would typically have been to be worked to death on a sugar plantation, as was the norm in that time, in that place. However, even with the world pitted against his race, he excelled so far as to be unignorable. At a time when chaos reigned, he managed to navigate the swirling political tides and survive with his head high as a general in the French army. And when the odds were stacked against him and his army, he somehow became a real-life hero, creating not only an example for his men on the battlefield, but in life.