#2.Joseph von Littrow's Flaming Intergalactic Communicator
Born in 1781, Joseph von Littrow was a nobleman and esteemed mathematician. In 1819 he became the director of the Vienna Observatory and developed the Littrow projection, the only conformal retroazimuthal map projection (this is fancy talk for "a map that accurately shows the angular distance between two points" or "Mapquest"). Despite all his perfectly reasonable and respectable contributions to astronomy, Littrow knew he had at least one formidably insane idea in him, and that idea involved fire.
Joseph Littrow gold medal in craziness.
Ever since mankind looked skyward and wondered who or what else was out there we have attempted to contact other species in the cosmos. Today we send radio waves into deep space. Littrow essentially did the same, except apparently in the 17th century, "radio waves" were called "flames." In order to get the aliens attention,
Littrow proposed digging a 30-kilometer wide circular ditch, filling it with kerosene and setting it on fire.
A ladder to the stars.
Evidently Littrow's idea was that a big enough fire would be seen from the heavens by any wayward visitors, but as any modern scientific mind would probably note, this would have to be the biggest freaking fire in the history of everything. A 40-mile long set of flaming letters reading "Smooch my terrestrial behind" would be difficult to read from Wisconsin, let alone Jupiter.