Yukon who is who

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Jan Welzl (1868 - 1948)
	
Jan Welzl was born in Czechoslovakia. In the 1920s, Welzl returned to his homeland from Siberia and began giving lectures and sending articles to the local newspapers. He lived in Dawson in the 1930s and ‘40s where his local claim to fame was an attempt to create a perpetual motion machine.  His invention filled his house and at the time of his death was sticking out of the windows.((Lawrence Millman, "Jan Welzl, storyteller." //The Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 31 October 2003.))

Wetzl dictated //Thirty Years in the North (Tricet Let Na Zlatem Severu)// to journalists Bedrich Golombek and Edvard Valenta and relinquished all rights. Local sales were poor but Czech satirist Karel Capek was able to get the book published in English in 1932. It was a selection for the Book of the Month Club and sold more than 150,000 copies. Vilhjalmur Stefansson was among those who felt the book was more fiction than fact and thought it might have been written by Capek who had included an introduction in the English edition. Welzl was on his way back to Siberia but ran out of money in Dawson and didn’t learn that the book was a bestseller until 1933. He didn’t recognise the material in the book so denied the book was his. He also demanded royalties, denying that he had signed a contract. Stefansson found the original contract and a statement from Welzl testifying to the book's veracity. After his death, Welzl became a symbol of unfettered individualism in communist Czechoslovakia and Czechs began making pilgrimages to the Catholic Cemetery above Dawson. The grave they chose to decorate was probably that of Italian-born Peter Fragetti.((Lawrence Millman, "Jan Welzl, storyteller." //The Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 31 October 2003.))