I liked the "ten reasons" but feel I must fight Fort's corner:
1. Fort spent almost a decade studying "everything: chemistry, meteorology, sociology, electricity, magnetism, architecture, music, psychology, astronomy, ethics--taking notes, reading books and going over indexes; hundreds of notes a day, sometimes--geology, entomology, botany, zoology, cytology, histology--over to the library in the morning; out for dinner, pencil and pad with knife and fork in front of me; back to the library; home, to take more notes until bedtime--history, philosophy, evolution, mechanics, mathematics, logic, civil engineering--sounds like a correspondence--school's circular--anthropology, physiology, ethnology, military and naval strategy, sculpture, economics..."
2. Fort wrote books, novels, stories and journalism. Much more than Beckjord ever managed!
3. Fort did not create monsters, contenting himself to try and demonstrate their existence.
4. Fort had a collection of objects and substances that fell from the sky, as well as mounted spiders. Beckjord...didn't.
5. Fort didn't need to found a museum, and even if he could have done, he wouldn't: "I accept that over the door of every museum, into which such things enter, is written 'Abandon Hope"
6. Fort invented supercheckers.
7. Fort's middle name was "Hoy" and he has a blue plaque in London. Beckjord doesn't.
8. Fort won a duel with a Frenchman, battering him and winning straight out.
9. Fort wouldn't be caught dead with The Incredible Squirrel Wire, despite his extensive reading.
10. Fort wasn't concerned to investigate phenomena in the field, being more concerned to examine how data was treated once it was made available.
Ian