Beauty isn't consistent across cultures, so
one person's historical hottie might be another person's old-timey troll. But there are certain names across history
that crop up again and again as the most attractive. These are the hottest famous people from history. In 1853, Austrian Emperor Franz Josef traveled
to meet Duchess Helene, whom his mother had picked out to be his future wife. The meeting was just meant to be a formal
acknowledgement, but then Franz Josef took one look at Helene's younger sister Elisabeth,
nicknamed Sisi, and immediately proposed to her instead. As Empress of Austria, Sisi's swoon-inducing
looks were famous, and remain famous today, with multiple actresses trying over the years
to capture her unearthly beauty. She had wavy brown hair down to her ankles,
a face that could launch more ships than a full-blown navy, and an athletic frame that
was rare for a woman of her era. She owned one of history's earliest examples
of a recreational gym, and she spent hours each day working out and building her muscle
tone. Her waist was just 19.5 inches, so it's really
no wonder that Franz Josef fell for her. But while Sisi's life may sound like a fairy
tale, it was anything but. She didn't want to be Empress, and her life
was filled with tragedy, following the untimely deaths of her only child and her sister, Sisi
herself was assassinated despite the fact that she had devoted herself to the poor,
and left almost all her personal fortune to charity. Samuel Coleridge once wrote that Lord Byron
had a face "so beautiful, a countenance I scarcely ever saw." Lady Caroline Lamb called him "mad, bad, and
dangerous to know." Portraits of the poet still carry quite a
simmer. Just looking at them is enough to conjure
images of this literary heartthrob sweeping you off your feet. But while Byron's name may still be shorthand
for "hottie," he may have actually been less conventionally attractive than you might think. According to a BBC documentary series about
Regency Britain, Byron was borderline obese, clocking in at 194 pounds while only standing
5'8." He also had a club foot and walked with a
limp. Additionally, he had some questionable appetites,
including probably seducing his half-sister and lusting after teenage Greek boys. So how is it that we remember Bryon as being
undeniably beautiful and romantic? It turns out that he was a master at PR. Any image of himself he didn't like, he had
destroyed. The paintings of him that still exist are
basically the historical equivalent of a carefully curated Instagram page. To say that John Wilkes Booth was famous for
his looks is like saying Joseph Stalin was famous for his poetry. Both certainly were noted in that area, but
it doesn't change their less attractive qualities. Before Booth went down in history as one of
America's most infamous assassins, he was known as an actor who was quite the looker. He had dark hair, piercing eyes, and an agile
frame. He had so many female fans you could say that
Booth-mania was the original Beatlemania. What's rarely noted about Booth is that his
adult life revolved around an intense rivalry with his brother. Edwin Booth was the best actor of his day
and more classically handsome, in opposition to John's wild charms. He was also a staunch supporter of the Union,
and in a textbook example of sibling rivalry, John supported the South. Although there's not really any evidence for
it, it's fun to speculate that sibling rivalry may have factored into John's assassination
of Abraham Lincoln. The president was killed just as Edwin was
in the middle of a successful run as Hamlet, so it's probably fair to stay that John's
showstopper upstaged his brother's "to be, or not to be" performance. To illustrate just how good-looking Lillie
Langtry was, it should be noted that even the dourly serious Encyclopedia Britannica
makes space to tell its readers just how hot she was. A British society woman, Langtry initially
made waves by appearing on the London stage in 1881. That was a bit of a major deal at a time when
acting was a job that was considered far beneath a well-bred woman. But while Langtry's acting may have ensured
she got into headlines, it wasn't what kept her there. That would be her looks, and what her looks
led to. She was considered so desirable that the future
King Edward VII put all his efforts into seducing her. Alas, looks fade, kings eventually have to
settle down, and even the most attractive people wind up invisible to anyone below the
age of 40. Luckily, Langtry future-proofed herself against
this inevitability when she was still in her twenties. In 1901, she opened her own theatre, allowing
herself to stay in the world she loved even once she stopped acting herself. She also set up her own stable for racing
horses, thereby simultaneously conquering the two worlds posh Londoners cared most about. Ever since he was elected, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy has had a reputation as one of the hottest, if not the hottest, men to ever occupy
the Oval Office. Still to this day, plenty of Americans know
the story that Kennedy won the 1960 presidential debates against Richard Nixon because the
cameras could barely contain how handsome he was. "I don't want the talents of any American
to go to waste." The story goes that when Kennedy and Nixon
went face to face, radio listeners thought that Nixon won, while TV viewers, enthralled
by JFK's appearance, plumped for Kennedy. It's certainly true that Kennedy rocked a
dapper look and that Nixon was far from the most conventionally handsome or charismatic
candidate. But the idea that it was Kennedy's looks that
carried the debate doesn't actually hold up, as there's almost no data to back up the myth
that radio listeners thought Nixon won. So if Kennedy's killer looks didn't really
win him the presidency, what is that story doing in a video about historical hotties? Well, the fact that people believe that his
appearance won him the debate because he was so good-looking proves just how good looking
people thought he was! Let's be real, if Nixon had been elected in
1960, nobody would've been saying that he triumphed because he was so hot. By age thirteen, Marie Antoinette was already
regarded as a great beauty. Smithsonian Magazine notes that she had "thick,
ash-blond hair, large, grayish blue eyes and a radiant complexion." When she was married off to Louis XVI of France
just one year later, she was so charming, so attractive, and so extroverted, that she
immediately won a kiss from her fiance's father, Louis XV. In another time and place, her beauty might've
led to her becoming a queen beloved by her nation. Sadly for her, though her legend lives on
in pop culture today, she didn't actually live in another time or place. She lived in France in the late 18th Century,
which was a place on the verge of detonating like a bomb. The masses were stifled by unfair laws, beset
by famine, crippled by taxes, and trapped in a shattered economy. Into this came a beautiful, vivacious girl
who thought nothing of spending the equivalent of over $6 million in today's money on a pretend
peasant village to play in in her palace gardens. In retrospect, there was really only one way
this could end. On October 16, 1793, Marie Antoinette was
guillotined in front of a Parisian mob who were baying for her blood. She was only 37. Giacomo Casanova is known today primarily
for being eye candy so exquisite that women were powerless before him. When he crops up in pop culture, he's usually
played by guys like Heath Ledger and David Tennant, exactly the sort of men you would
imagine swinging in your bedroom window, sweeping you off your feet, and seducing you with style. Yet he would've hated this reputation. He saw his life's work not as seduction, but
as literature and the arts. While what we remember of Casanova's life
tends to be his affairs with over 120 women, about two-thirds of his autobiography has
nothing to do with love-making. Outside of his romantic exploits, he wrote
mathematical treatises, a proto-science fiction novel, a translation of the Iliad, and even
a pamphlet that could be considered feminist. Ending his life working as a librarian, he
likely hoped to be remembered, if he was remembered for anything at all, as an intellectual. And yet here he is, slumming it on a list
of the most famous hotties of all time. History isn't always fair. By the standards of her day, Catherine the
Great was pretty average looking. But the funny thing about attraction is that
there are no hard and fast rules. While Catherine, who's been played onscreen
by the likes of Helen Mirren and Catherine Zeta-Jones, wasn't considered a looker either
then or now, she did have one quality that made everyone she met go loopy for her: she
was reportedly one of the most charming women to have ever lived. By all accounts, she was witty, erudite, knowledgeable,
and had a fantastic knack for actually listening to what other people were saying, rather than
simply waiting for a gap in the conversation. Even as a child, she had these qualities. When she met Frederick the Great of Prussia
when she was just four, she made such an impression on him that he remembered her for the rest
of his life. The upshot of this is that as an adult, Catherine
was never short on lovers. She took at least three major men to her bedroom
while her husband was still alive, and that's not even including the procession of lovers
she indulged in toward the end of her life. Hey, power and personality are hot! In the wake of the Interregnum, which saw
puritanical Oliver Cromwell running England, Britain went through a backlash of parties,
hedonism, and oodles of lovemaking. It was during this era of Restoration that
Barbara Villiers rose higher than she would've ever otherwise dreamed possible. The mistress of Charles II, she knew she was
attractive, and she dressed in a way that flaunted her beauty. Her affairs were legendary, including with
John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough and ancestor of Winston Churchill. She sat for so many portraits that she became
one of the most recognizable women in Britain. It's probably fair to say that her face was
that of the entire Restoration era. Unfortunately, this made her a major target
for public abuse. She was called "the curse of the nation,"
and the king's devotion to her helped make the crown extremely unpopular for a time. But although Villiers ended her life in poverty,
she managed to outlive nearly all her critics, dying in 1709 at the age of 68. In this case, beauty had the last laugh. Nobody knows what the real Helen of Troy actually
looked like, or if there even was a real Helen of Troy. but that hasn't stopped people from
gossiping about her for thousands of years. In 2018, History Today made a list of all
the things Helen of Troy has been called over the millennia. It ranged from Shakespeare calling her a "strumpet,"
to Chaucer indirectly labeling her a "harlot," to others calling her a "tart,"
a "flurt," and some not-safe-for-work descriptors. The woman whose face launched a thousand ships
has often been held up as the Western ideal of beauty. But she's also a good poster child for how
societies have often reacted to beautiful women with active love lives. That is to say, they've not always been super
keen on them. "I've heard rumors of your beauty. For once, the gossips were right." Of course, it's debatable if Helen, who's
been played onscreen by the likes of Diane Kruger, should even count as a historic figure. She's mostly known from Homer's Iliad and
Greek myth. But while Helen herself might be a myth, it's
likely that she's a blend of many real ancient women. That really demonstrates just how judgmental
societies can be towards attractive women, as Helen was slandered for millennia despite
quite possibly not even being a real person. Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite
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