Sex serves two distinct purposes: pleasure and procreation. But there’s a third, less popular (at least depending on your religion) purpose: to break world records.
While it may be nice to one day bounce a little baby on your knee and watch it grow into a responsible man or woman, it’s probably less nice to have to swim through a sea of wiggling feet and pudgy cheeks just to leave the house. And surely leaving the house is suddenly the most fun activity in your life if you are any one of the prolific baby-making fathers on this list.
Here’s a look at a few men who simply do not know when to call it quits:
10. Warren Jeffs
Stereotypes come alive in the Church of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism)- their presidents have a tradition of fathering record-breaking numbers of children (with multiple spouses of course). Jeffs is responsible for the mass production of 60 children via as many as 70 wives. But his personal contribution to population density isn’t his worst crime; in 2005 he was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for fleeing charges involving his role in arranging the illegal under-aged marriages of his followers. Also, he was convicted of child sexual assault last year, female victims being as young as 12 and 15. He has been sentenced to life “plus twenty years” in prison.
9. Rulon Jeffs
Rulon Jeffs gives new meaning to the expression, “Like father, like son.” The father of Warren (and many others), he has created roughly 65 children with 75 wives (and as his son Warren proves, not every one turns out so great). Rulon’s father is actually the one who explained the merits of polygamy to him in 1938, being the product of a multi-wife practician himself.
8. Ramon Revilla
A Filipino actor and former senator, his greatest accomplishment is a non-paying one: Revilla created 72 little Ramons with the help of 16 women. After appearing in some small roles and heading the Secret Service Unit of the Bureau of Customs, he decided in 1972 to create his own production company (Imus Productions) with wife-at-the-time Azucena, writing and directing his own pictures. In 1992, he became senator and held office for two terms. Playing mostly tough guy roles in action films, he wouldn’t be the last of his kind to hold office (e.g. Arnold) and certainly not the last to incite controversy via the fruit of his overactive loins.
7. Cecil Byran Jacobson
This case is rather disturbing. Jacobson was a fertility doctor out of Salt Lake City, Utah. He came under investigation for feigning pregnancy results (false positives), and amidst such, another horrifying truth came to surface. Jacobson had been using his own sperm to impregnate patients. While 15 children matched his DNA, it is speculated that a total of 75 may be of his doing (or wrongdoing, that is). He was charged with all kinds of fraud in 1992, receiving only 5 years in prison and a revoked medical license. That same year he also received an “Ig Nobel Prize” in Biology, the prize being a parody of the Nobel going to discoveries that “cannot or should not be reproduced.”
6. Ramesses II
Largely considered the greatest pharaoh in Egyptian history, Ramesses led many a great fertile siege, with positive results; he also was responsible for many victorious territorial battles. He was a great, covetous, waste-laying conqueror, but no more evidence exists than in the number of pregnancies his wide-eyed pursuits caused: with 8 wives (not all simultaneously), he had at least 80 children, 44-56 being sons and 40-44 being daughters. You have to wonder if, after that many children, if he didn’t start to look like the dried up mummy much earlier on.
5. Emperor Meiji
Another powerful leader with a powerful sperm count, this Japanese emperor had 87 children. He reigned from 1867 to 1912 and had a wife and several concubines, 2 of which died while bearing his initial children. His succeeding son as it turned out had a crippling neurological condition, which ultimately resulted in his inability to serve. Emperor Meiji himself died of medical conditions he suffered from, including diabetes and uremia. Unfortunately, in these times, healthcare wasn’t exactly at the top of its game, not exactly the best of conditions to have 87 children in.
4. Ziona Chana
This skilled seed-planter (so to speak) is the head of the Chana sect of Christianity in India. This sect, a polygamist one, was formed in 1942, and through it Chana maintained 39 wives and fathered 94 children. His family is identified as the largest existing one today, with 14 daughters in law and 33 grandchildren tipping the scale well over reasonability. How this counts as Christianity makes their doctrines all the more alluring, if at least for good bathroom reading material.
3. Winston Blackmore
Another Mormon hogging a spot on this list, Blackmore leads a Mormon Fundamentalist sect called the “Blackmore/Bountiful Community” and cranked out 121 kids with the help of up to 25 wives. Leading Canada’s largest polygamist sect of Mormonism, its hard not to think the numbers were rigged a little in his favor, since he is inherently securing a strong headcount all by himself.
2. King Sargon
Sargon of Akkad (real name unknown) was a Semitic emperor who ruled and conquered the Sumerian city-states somewhere between the 23rd and 22nd centuries B.C. (historical memory starts getting a little fuzzy when you go back in time that far). Sargon’s empire includes large chunks of Mesopotamia, and what’s now Iran, Asia Minor, and Syria. Well his facts are a little hazy, but it is said that he had about 200 children, a virtual military unto itself.
1. Ismail Ibn Sharif
This guy, allegedly, was a baby-making maniac. A sultan during the Moroccan Alaouite Dynasty, he reigned from 1672-1727 and is said to have fathered 867 children, consisting of 525 sons and 342 daughters. If so, strict baby-making would then be a task demanding his utmost sultanic attention. The number seems improbable, like the kind of exaggeration passed-down in myths by the palace-full. However, Morocco- where literary greats like Tennessee Williams and William S. Burroughs were known to seek inspiration- is the perfect source for such great artistic liberty.
19 Comments
I just want to say that the (Mormons) that are listed are not actually members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) They are however members of their own branches of the church. i.e. Warren Jeffs is actually a member of the FLDS, Fundemetalist Latter Day Saints. This is a completely different sect of Christianity. Present-day Mormons do not practice polygamy and have not since the late 1800’s. Saying that the people listed are LDS or Mormon is the equivalent of calling a Catholic a Protestant, or a Lutheran an Anglican.
I’m glad somebody brought this up. Even though I’m not a member of the LDS church, I have several friends who are, and I know that the official LDS hierarchy would never support such behaviors. Therefore, it’s important to distinguish between the LDS church, and it’s rogue offshoots. It’s also like comparing a Montana-based paramilitary group and an established Protestant group.
Thanks for saying something–I caught that too.
That said, it may be fair to call them “Mormons,” just as you can call a Catholic, a Methodist, a Baptist, and a Fundamentalist all “Christians,” but it certainly isn’t fair to imply that they operate as part of or with the tacit approval of the LDS church.
Actually, I would call them all Christians. To my mind, to be a christian, you have to follow and advocate the teachings of Jesus (as you identify them) and you have to identify yourself as being a christian. By this definition, Mormons,catholics, all forms of protistant sects, and so on are All forms of Christianity.
I would too…my point, in this case, was actually pretty much the same….they are “mormon” because they follow The Book of Mormon as a sacred text, but they aren’t part of the mainline LDS chruch.
Perhaps I should have used a better analogy…like:
You can call them “Mormon,” in the same way that you can call Californians, Hawaiians, Alaskans, Floridians, and New Yorkers “American.”
The problem in this article is that it fails to differentiate between the mainline LDS church and these cult/splinter groups…Nowhere under the Rulon and Warren Jeffs entries does it mention that they were the leaders of the Fundamentalist LDS church. In fact, the Warren Jeffs entry makes it sound like he is a part of the mainline church.
Most Mormons in the mainline LDS church would be horrified.
Your definition of Christian is hilariously strict.
Haha! Like^
0/10, you forgot Genghis Khan.
about 8% of the men alive today are direct decendants of Genghis Khan…
Literally, the greatest biological father of all time.
The Greatest Composer of Music whoever lived, Johann Sebastian Bach had 21 children. So basically all he did was compose music and make babies. One of them went on to almost have as much success as his Father, that being Carl Frederic Emmanuel Bach (or C.P.E. Bach).
Idi Amin? That mad cannibal from The Last King of Scotland? 42 CHILDREN. He was a mad shagger as well as a madman..
Some men have contributed sperm to sperm banks and may have no idea how many children their “contribution” has created. A single hour in a room by himself and Voila! he has deposited the makings of entire legions.
There is one man who has created about 15 children now in his late 20s. He performs for any woman who wants a child without the complications and difficulties of a relationship. He gives the donation to a doctor who implants it. And he claims to still be a virgin.
Ghengis Khan should be #1, he was so prolific you can measure his distant descendants as a percentage of the world’s total population, and not a small one
So, I want to know how it is possible for Warren Jeffs to produce 60 children via 70 wives. If each wife had one child, thats 70 children. Same with Rulon Jeffs. Get your math straight.
There are a variety of explanations, Cam: wife neglect (when they are approaching 100 wives and have favorites and others that were foisted on them, some of the wives will have lots of contact with the husband, and others very little), infertility, age at marriage (Rulon was very old when he married a significant chunk of his wives and couldn’t do the deed much anymore, Warren arranged a lot of those marriages and may have been setting aside those women for himself), age of the wives (Warren married little girls, and he also married several of his father’s widows who had been married to Rulon a while before Warren and may have had a ticking biological clock). I think approximately 20 of Rulon’s wives were able to conceive children with him…the younger wives who were decades younger than Rulon were taught God would renew him and I understand some kept baby cradles in their rooms in hopes of eventually having his child. At least a few of Rulon’s widows who married him too late in his life to conceive a baby conceived children with Warren after they married him.
Basically, it never said that ALL of his wives had kids. He married 70 women, some had multiple kids, some had none, and he ended up with 60 kids. Annaleigh provided several explanations for WHY some wives had no kids, but it seemed to me the fundamental thing you weren’t getting was THAT they didn’t, so I thought this might help.
I know someone pointed this out already, but I just thought I’d say that the inaccuracies in several of these entries (mostly the whole LDS-polygamy stuff) made me stop reading this list halfway through. Whoever edits these lists (if anyone!) should catch stuff like that.
zeus…