Emperor Norton I of the United States

Wikipedia featured this article today. It's one of the funnier things I've read.

Basically boils down to this: Mr. Joshua A. Norton declared himself the Emperor of the United States. And because he had the conviction that he was (you know, being borderline nuts and all), and the brass to say it... People treated him darn near like an Emperor. Police saluted him, he issued his own currency, people defered to him, and even though he died near-penniless, his funeral was well appointed and featured front-page of the two largest newspapers of his city. 30,000 people attended his funeral.

It's just... Interesting.

That's all I got though. Rock on.