In a legendary display of gonzo madness, Hunter S. Thompson celebrated the 1990 holiday season by torching a massive Christmas tree inside his living room fireplace at Owl Farm. Witnessed by a terrified TIME magazine reporter, the writer doused the oversized shrub in lighter fluid just feet away from a crate of 9-mm bullets and the original manuscript of ‘Hell’s Angels’. Wearing a dime-store wig and swigging Chivas Regal, Thompson ignored pleas to stop as the inferno spilled into the room, cementing his reputation as a man who lived perpetually on the edge of catastrophe.