Ned Kelly
The Australian bushranger became one of the country's first folk heroes, appealing to the downtrodden poor who were fed up with their colonial British rulers. Declared outlaws after killing three policemen, Kelly and his gang lost themselves in the southeastern Australian bush, robbing two banks and, in one episode, burning the townspeople's mortgage contracts. Finally cornered by police in the town of Glenrowan, the four members of the Kelly gang emerged in enormous homemade suits of armor, lurching toward petrified policemen as bullets bounced off their chests. The armor did not cover Kelly's lower half, though; he was shot in the legs and, unlike the rest of the gang, captured alive. Kelly was hanged on Nov. 11, 1880. The story goes that his last words were, "Such is life."