Like Roosevelt, Rondon returned home a hero and remained one for the rest of his life. He was hounded by photographers and journalists, invited to meet the president of Brazil, asked to run for political office (an opportunity he repeatedly declined), and promoted first to brigadier general and then, near the end of his life, to marshal. In the 1920s, after meeting Rondon on a trip to Brazil, Albert Einstein nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, and, in 1956, the Brazilian government renamed a territory of ninety-four thousand square miles—nearly twice the size of England—Rondônia in his
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