Voting Station

Carl Akeley

Please vote to return to collections.

Adventurer

The Resume

    (May 19, 1864-November 18, 1926)
    Born in Clarendon, New York
    Hunter and taxidermist
    Accompanied Theodore Roosevelt’s African Expedition (1909-10)
    Headed six expeditions in the Congo
    Collected and mounted animals displayed at the Field Museum in Chicago, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC
    Considered the father of modern taxidermy
    Namesake for the Akeley Hall of African Animals at the American Museum of Natural History

Why he might be annoying:

    He failed the entrance exam for Yale.
    He was fired from an early job stuffing birds for women’s hats for falling asleep during work.
    During his first expedition the Congo, his behavior to the native porters prompted most of them to desert.
    During their divorce hearing, his first wife Delia claimed he had threatened her life (1923).
    He said of one silverback gorilla, ‘I am fonder of him than I am of myself’ – then shot him and stuffed him for a museum exhibit.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He wrestled a leopard bare-handed.
    He survived six broken ribs after being trampled by an elephant.
    He helped convince King Albert I of Belgium to establish the first national park in Africa (1925).
    He invented shotcrete (and the cement gun to apply it) to repair the façade of the Field Museum (1907).
    He invented a high-speed motion picture camera and used it for the first films of gorillas in the wild.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 10 Votes: 70.0% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 14 Votes: 57.14% Annoying