Edward Allen Oxford was marooned for two years during the end of World War I on what he claimed to have been marooned for no more than six weeks on an inhabitable tropical island off the coast of Antarctica. Officials called him 'insane'.
Andrew Crosse, an amateur scientist, made the unthinkable happen 180 years ago: he accidently created life. He never explicitly stated that his little creatures were conjured from the aether, but he was never able to discern where they originated from if they weren't produced from the aether.