10 famous horses

Ha, horses. Interesting, useful and beautiful creatures, with a long history of association with mankind. Members of the Chinese zodiac, and representative of loyalty, steadfastness and speed. In no particular order, 10 horses that for some reason or another, are still remembered today.

1. Incitatus

Horse of Caligula, 4th emperor of Rome. According to the historian Suetonius (and wikipedia), he was lucky enough to have a stable of marble, an ivory manger, purple blankets and a collar of precious stones. He also had a wife, although from a stallion's point of view having to go from a herd of mares to 1 mare probably wasn't an improvement. Caligula wanted to appoint him consul, which would have created slight problems if and when Incitatus came to preside over an angry Senate.

2. Barbaro

Famous for not winning races. In the 2006 this horse broke its legs and should have been euthanised. However, the story somehow caught the US public's imagination and the horse was operated on 7 times before he developed problems in all four legs and had to be put down.

3. Red Hare (赤兔马)

Famous steed from the Three Kingdoms period (AD 184-263) in China, said to be able to run a thousand 里 in a day. Was ridden by 3 generals, one of whom nearly became a king (Dong Zhuo), one who was the greatest warrior of the day (Lu Bu), and one who was eventually venerated as the god of war (Guan Yu). It's not known for sure why this horse was called the Red Hare, but there are occasional reports of horses that have reddish sweat from the Turkestan-Xinjiang area.

4. Marengo

One of Napoleon's many Arabian horses. This one though, survived the retreat from Moscow and was captured at Waterloo along with the French emperor. Was sold to Britain and eventually became a snuffbox for the British Army (well, his hoof did, anyway). Sadly.

5. Clever Hans

A horse that was said to be able to count and perform simple mathematical operations in early 20th century Germany, giving answers by tapping his hoof. Was eventually rumbled when a psychologist discovered that Hans' trainer was giving him (unconscious) clues as to when to stop tapping to give the correct answer.

6. Red Rum

Won the Grand National 3 times and came second twice from 1973 to 1977. Presumably very tired after that, he retired and lived a long and chaste life, dying in 1995 and was buried at the winning post at Aintree.

7. Bucephalus

Horse that belonged to Alexander the Great. Was tamed by Alexander, and was ridden by him in his conquest of Asia. Finally died in the Punjab, killed at the Battle of the Hydaspes River, and was buried somewhere in what is now Pakistan. Alexander built a city on his grave and named it Bucephala. Wikipedia says it's near modern-day Jhelum.

8. Seabiscuit

Racehorse. There's a pretty good movie made about him. Typical runt to champion story, the Rocky of horse racing. But Seabiscuit did exist, unlike Rocky Balboa, and he was small and perceived to be slow. The underdog-wins tale was a potent feel-good pick-me-up during the Great Depression. Seabiscuit ran a head to head race against, and beat, the US Triple Crown winner War Admiral in 1938, which in hindsight shouldn't have been too surprising, because both Seabiscuit and War Admiral were descended from...

9. ...Man o' War

Consensus is that this horse was the best racehorse of all time. He won 20 out of 21 races, and, in what was probably an even greater achievement, sired 200 champions. Yes, 200 offspring who would later on go to win races.

10. Hidalgo

A mustang that supposedly won a 3,000 mile race across the Arabian desert ridden by Frank T. Hopkins, beating the finest Arabian horses. This was made into the movie Hidalgo. However, the race was probably never held (i.e. the movie is pure fiction). Nevertheless, Frank Hopkins was an activist for the preservation of the wild mustang, and he did win many endurance races, although probably not all on Hidalgo.