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The “world’s greatest pedestrian,” as an old magazine once put it, may have been a farm boy born outside Zagreb, Croatia, in 1878. He has no Wikipedia page (yet!), though in his heyday his press coverage was abundant.

- -Ben McGrath

“From childhood up he would watch the sun, a fiery ball, going down behind the western hills and wonder where it went,” the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette wrote in 1914. His name was Josip—later Joseph—Mikulec. He traversed the jungle in Brazil, the hills of Siberia, Tasmania, and Toledo, Ohio, all in the interest of circumnavigating the globe on foot, paying his way by selling postcards featuring his own likeness. He was said to have walked a hundred and twenty miles without sleeping. He became a brand ambassador for shoemakers. He wore gold rings that he claimed were given to him by Geronimo, and hoisted a fifty-eight-pound leather volume on his shoulder bearing the signatures of other witnesses to his exploits: Nikola Tesla, Prince Albert of York, Admiral Togo.

As he grew older, Mikulec began to realize that his aching joints weren't as replaceable as his rubber soles. He sometimes allowed himself the comfort of trains and fashioned a stroller for his giant keepsake. It dawned on him that the baby in his carriage, containing the penmanship of tens of thousands of dignitaries during a period of rapid modernization, was perhaps more impressive than all the perambulation. In 1923, the Times reported on Mikulec’s trip to see a rare-book dealer about his prized possession, which he'd thought might be worth a million dollars. “This is probably the greatest collection of autographs in the world,” the dealer admitted, while declining to offer any money.