Howard Hughes (1905 - 1976)
Howard Hughes was an American businessmen and one of the richest people in the world. He inherited his family's engineering company when he was only 18 and built up his business empire to include movie studios, aircraft companies and airlines.
But Hughes had a fear of illness and spent most of his life trying to avoid contact with germs. During his last years, he lay naked in bed in dark rooms, refusing to touch anything. When he had to get out of bed, he wore tissue boxes on his feet instead of shoes. He quickly burned any clothes he had worn.
Hughes was terrified of catching even the slightest illness. He wrote a handbook for his staff that included instructions on how to open tins of fruit. The label had to be removed and the tin washed before it was opened, and the fruit had to be poured into a sterile dish.
Towards the end of his life, Hughes' behaviour became even stranger. He became a recluse, and rarely took a bath, cleaned his teeth or cut his hair or fingernails. When he died, his body was so unrecognisable fingerprints were the only way the police could identify him.
Madame Tussaud (1761 - 1850)
When she was a young girl, Marie Tussaud lived with her mother in the home of a rich doctor whose hobby was modelling figures in wax. Tussaud began making wax figures herself, and when the doctor opened an exhibition of his work in Paris, she became his assistant.