The Emperor of the United States

Joshua Abraham Norton was born around 1819 to a merchant family in England. They moved to South Africa in 1821, and upon his parents' death in 1849, Norton took his inheritance to San Francisco.

He promptly bankrupted himself trying to corner the rice market in Chinatown when his entire shipment was lost in a freak storm.

We lose track of Norton for about five years, but in 1859 he returned, issuing this proclamation to several major SF newspapers:

At the pre-emptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last nine years and ten months past of San Fransisco, California, declare and proclaim myself the Emperor of These United States. - September 17, 1859

Emperor Norton continued to issue decrees throughout his reign and was soon a figure of some renown. He corresponded with the Queen Victoria and Abraham Lincoln and appointed Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) the "Official Spinner of Tales and Teller of Stories ... for the duration of his mortal life".

His decrees cover topics from the absurd (he knighted his dogs, Lazarus and Bummer, and demanded they be allowed free entry into all SF eating establishments and theaters), to the strangely prophetic (In 1872 he decreed that a bridge be built to link San Fransisco and Oakland;
he disbanded both the Republican and Democratic parties in 1869; he proposed the formation of a "League of Nations" to meet in SF in order to quell dissent and misunderstanding between countries).

Norton was widely considered a madman and a fool, yet all San Francisco policemen saluted when he passed. He printed his own money, which was accepted in almost all SF restaurants. Stories are told of Norton singlehandedly disbanding an angry mob outside a Chinatown restaurant by reciting the Lord's Prayer until they left.

When Emperor Norton I died in 1880, it's estimated that 10,000 people came to pay their respects. His funeral cortege was over two miles long, and the day was marked by a total eclipse of the sun.