Lord Byron, an English poet of the early 19th Century, was a prominent figure within the Romantic literary movement. His two best-known poems were Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. He was as prominent in English society 200 years ago as any major rock star is today.
He was close friends with Percy Bysshe Shelley, a fellow Romantic poet, and Shelley's girlfriend (later wife) Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. One summer night in 1816, the three of them (along with Dr. John Polidori and Mary's sister Claire Claremont) stayed at Byron's estate in Geneva, Switzerland and had a writing contest. They had one night to write a horrifying story. Mary wrote a short draft that later became Frankenstein. (Polidori wrote a vampire story; Byron and Shelley's stories amounted to very little.)
Byron had scandalous affairs with many prominent women. One of them, Lady Caroline Lamb, described him as "mad, bad and dangerous to know." From this, we get the adjective "Byronic."
Byron had a club foot. Despite this, he went on late in his life (He died at age 36) to be something of a war hero in Greek's war of independence from the Ottoman Empire (modern Turkey). He had no military experience, but his personal wealth helped the movement immensely. He got sick and died during the war (However bad his illness was, the primitive state of medicine at the time is likely what killed him). He is considered a hero to Greeks to this day.
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