In 1849, Henry Brown was determined to escape his miserable life on a Virginia plantation. But how? Safety was hundreds of miles away, and he wasn't a young man anymore. Brown decided to get creative. And by that we mean, for the third straight entry, the escapee used a scheme that would seem too ridiculous for a cartoon.

First, he had a carpenter friend make up a wooden box 3 feet long by 2 feet wide, which the 5-foot-8-inch, 200-pound Brown somehow squeezed himself into as though he was playing some sort of horrifying human Tetris. Then he had two other friends carry the box down to the offices of the Adams Freight Company and have it "conveyed as dried goods" to Philadelphia. Seriously, you read that right. Henry Brown mailed himself to freedom.

Samuel W. Rowse

"Suck it, FedEx."

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Of course it wasn't quite that easy. The biggest problem came when postal workers ignored the large "This Side Up" signs plastered all over the box and stacked Brown with his head facing down. Since Brown couldn't let anyone know he was in the crate, he was forced to remain standing on his head like that for 20 minutes, until he could be sure he was alone. Brown later claimed that the experience almost killed him and that he was barely able to cling to consciousness long enough to save himself, which does tend to overshadow the equally impressive fact that he somehow managed to right himself without getting out of the box.

American Antiquarian Society

"Imagine what those dicks would have done if we had put a 'Fragile' sticker on there."

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Not one to miss a chance to rub it in, Brown immediately adopted "Box" as his new middle name and embarked on a hugely lucrative lecture tour while supporters of slavery fumed impotently. This also infuriated prominent abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, who wanted Brown to keep the details of his escape a secret so they could encourage other slaves to escape the same way. So while we've got to give Brown props for his badassery, we can't quite forgive him for potentially depriving us of a past where the Civil War never happened because every slave in the South simply mailed himself to liberty.