At least, that tends to be the way history books present it. In reality, great historical figures' lives have more random side quests than your average RPG. For instance ...

Though the average person will bounce around a dozen jobs in their lifetime, we tend to assume great historical figures were born to do one thing. Sure, Abe Lincoln had to work his way up to being president, but his youth was still spent learning about the law and politics -- pre-presidential stuff.

5 Isaac Newton Was a Real-Life Sherlock Holmes

W. Schmollinger

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You know Isaac Newton: discoverer of the laws of gravity, inventor of calculus, batshit insane alchemy enthusiast. Newton was one of the founding fathers of modern physics, and after he came up with half of modern science, he was a big enough name to be drowned in prestige and easy living for the rest of his life.

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He could drink cognac all night and smoke mercury every day.

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Which is why it was a surprise that a few years after his massive scientific breakthroughs, Newton spent four years hunting for criminals in the tough boroughs of London. Yeah, you read that right: Isaac freaking Newton, the guy whose most famous physical altercation was a made-up knockout defeat to a pomaceous fruit, went all hard-boiled detective on London's ass.

In 1696, the 53-year-old Newton left academia for an extremely well-paid position at the Mint. While seemingly a literal license to print money, Newton soon found that this was by no means an "all play, no work" position. Counterfeiters were everywhere, fake money was drowning the real currency, and the country was facing the kind of cash crisis that tends to incite revolutions. So Newton set to work, not just inventing ways to make counterfeiting more difficult, but personally tracking down the forgers.

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Sometimes even with excessive force.

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Thus, the world's greatest scientist turned into the world's greatest detective. He acquired an enormous network of spies squealing to him about every rotten penny in a 50-mile radius. He took to the streets, hunting for clues and information. And he was efficient as hell -- in his four years on the job, he and his troops captured and executed a total of 27 forgers.