Timothy Dexter was born into a family of poor farmers in Massachusetts in the mid-1700s. Dexter, though, refused to accept his family's station in life and set out to become wealthy and well-respected. He started out as a leather craftsman but made his fortune by using new dollars to purchase heaps of Continentals, the pre-independence currency of the 13 colonies, for a fraction of pennies on the dollar.

It was an insanely stupid bet that no one with any sense would have made, because Continentals had been discontinued and were no longer in use when he bought them. However, when America became independent, the government allowed Continentals to be traded in for 1% of their face value, which was way more than what Dexter paid for them. He made millions on a gamble.

That allowed him to indulge his fantasies: he called himself a lord, pretended to be a philosopher, and commissioned 40 statues of himself that he placed around his estate. Meanwhile, his aristocratic neighbors gave him horrendous investment advice in an attempt to bankrupt him, but to no avail. He thought the wealthy elite would embrace him now that he had money, but they shunned him, as they still saw him as low-class.

He was once urged to sell coals to Newcastle, an endeavor he then undertook. When he brought the coal to the English city which was internationally known for its supply, the local miners were on strike, so he actually made money! He also staged his own spectacular funeral, attended by 3,000, so he could observe the occasion while still among the living.

To celebrate his achievements, he wrote a near-incomprehensible memoir (Dexter was barely literate) that featured absolutely no punctuation. He handed out copies to his rich neighbors, who were, of course, horrified.