5 People Who Died During Sex: And 100 Other Terribly Tasteless Lists Paperback (3 page)

2

Henry Ford took to eating weed sandwiches every day when he heard that the American scientist and dietitian George Washington Carver did the same.

3

In 1644, the Danish author Theodore Reinking wrote a book lamenting the diminished fortunes of the Danes after their defeat by their neighbor Sweden in the Thirty Years’ War. It offended the Swedes so much that he was imprisoned for life. After several years in jail, however, he was given a straight choice: eat your book or lose your head: He chose to eat his words.

4

In exile, the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was known as

“Dr. Jaffa,” an affectionate title deriving from his excessive consumption of Jaffa oranges. A former cannibal, Amin had become a fruitarian in his twilight years. He had been a reluctant cannibal, though; he said he found human flesh “too salty.”

5

Hitler became a vegetarian in 1931 when his doctors put him on a meatless diet to cure him of flatulence and a chronic stomach disorder, but he often lapsed. According to his cook, he was partial to sausages and stuffed pigeon.

6

The ancient sailors of Spain and Portugal regularly ate rat meat on long voyages. The crew on board Magellan’s
12

[Twelve Faddish Diets]

ship during his ill-fated attempt to circumnavigate the world sold rats to each other for one ducat each.

7

An eleventh-century order of monks, the Cathars, frowned on all forms of procreation, but they practiced frequent and savage flagellation and sodomy, neither of which they considered sinful because neither involved risk of pregnancy. The Cathars were also vegetarians on the grounds that animals were produced by sexual intercourse and that their flesh was therefore sinful.

They did, however, eat plenty of fish in the mistaken belief that fish do not copulate.

8

A craze for swallowing live goldfish began at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1939 when a student, Lothrop Withington, enjoyed a fishy snack to win a $10 bet. His friends told the college newspaper about it, and the Boston newspapers picked up the story.

Throughout the spring of 1939, the U.S. goldfish population nosedived as students all over the country vied to outdo each other in the consumption of finny comestibles. An unofficial record for goldfish-swallowing was established—forty-three in one sitting—although the teenager who accomplished this was kicked out of his school for “conduct unbecoming to a student.”

9

Ernest Hemingway wrote most of his works on a diet of peanut butter sandwiches.

10

In 1994, fisherman Renato Arganza was rescued after spending several days at sea clinging to a buoy after his
13

[Twelve Faddish Diets]

boat capsized off the Philippines. He survived by eating his underpants.

11

Sir Atholl Oakeley (1900–1987) was Britain’s first professional wrestling baronet. Sir Atholl, short for a wrestler at 5' 9'', was however very stout, having built up his body by religiously drinking eleven pints of milk a day for three years. This dedicated diet was adopted on the advice of his idol, a giant wrestler called Hackenschmidt, who later confessed to Sir Atholl that the quantity of milk had in fact been a misprint: The correct amount was only one pint per day.

12

Scornful of reports that his people didn’t have enough to eat, the dictator Nicolae Ceau¸sescu complained that Romanians ate too much and introduced the revolutionary Ceau¸sescu Diet, a “scientific” regimen mysteriously free of the protein-rich staples Romanians missed most, especially meat and dairy products. To show that production targets were actually being met, he also staged visits to the countryside, where he was filmed inspecting displays of meat and fruit. The film crews alone knew that the food was mostly made from wood and polystyrene.

14

10

History’s

Ten Least Appealing

Dinner Dates

1

MARY MALLON Also known as “Typhoid Mary,”

Mallon was the world’s most notorious disease carrier. In her capacity as a New York cook before World War I, she was personally responsible for fifty-three separate outbreaks of typhoid involving 1,300 people, which resulted in at least three deaths. She regularly changed her name to confuse health officials. She spent the last twenty-three years of her life detained in quarantine in a state hospital, protesting her innocence to the end.

2

ANNE BOLEYN The second wife of King Henry VIII had a distressing habit, first observed during her coronation banquet, of vomiting between courses. She employed a lady-in-waiting whose job it was to hold up a sheet and catch the royal spew whenever the Queen looked like she was about to throw up.

3

EMPEROR SHIH HU OF CHINA (a.d. 334–349)

Banquets in the Imperial court were a trial for the Emperor’s guests but particularly bad news for the ladies in his harem. He would select a concubine, have her beheaded, and then serve her cooked torso to his visitors.

Keen to impress, Shih Hu also insisted on passing the uncooked head around on a platter for his guests’

inspection so he could prove that he hadn’t sacrificed his ugliest mistress.

4

CZAR PETER THE GREAT Said to have the table manners of a baptized bear, the Czar liked to trample across banquet tables, treading on dishes and cutlery as he went, with his unwashed feet. Russia’s first book of
15

[History’s Ten Least Appealing Dinner Dates]

mealtime etiquette wasn’t published until several years after his death. It was written by the Romanov empress Anne, who had revolutionary ideas about good manners and wanted to keep up with European standards of refined taste. Entitled
The Honest Mirror of Youth
, the slim volume advised discerning Russians how to use a knife and fork, when not to spit on the table, not to jab their elbows into their seating partners during formal dinners, and not to place their feet in guests’ dishes while standing on the dining table.

5

DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON The literary giant had a voracious appetite coupled with appalling table manners and—always guaranteed to break the ice at dinner parties—Tourette’s syndrome. Johnson’s favorite dish was a vast pudding containing beefsteaks, kidneys, oysters, larks, and mushrooms. According to his biographer, James Boswell, he swilled, gorged, and stuffed himself until sweat ran down his cheeks and the veins stood out on his forehead. Johnson’s eating habits were so disturbing that sometimes when he was invited to dine with some prominent person he would eat behind a screen.

6

MRS. BEETON Her famous
Book of Cookery and
Household Management
, regarded as the housewife’s culinary bible for years after it was first published in 1861, contained several potentially lethal recipes.

7

KING LOUIS XIV OF FRANCE Although the best-known portraits of Louis XIV portray him as a dapper
16

[History’s Ten Least Appealing Dinner Dates]

little man, in old age he became morbidly obese. In his later years he struggled to eat because his doctors, while removing several of his bad teeth, had accidentally broken his upper jaw and smashed his palate; from then on Louis always had difficulty chewing, and bits of food often came down his nose.

8

JUAN PERÓN By the time the Argentinean dictator’s wife Eva died of cancer in 1952, an eminent pathologist had been on standby for two weeks to embalm her. With Eva barely dead, he quickly filled her veins with alcohol, then glycerin, which kept her organs intact and made her skin appear almost translucent. Juan planned to have her housed in a giant new mausoleum, but he was forced to suddenly flee the country, and the body disappeared for several years. In 1971, however, Juan and Eva were touchingly reunited, and from that day on, Eva’s corpse was always present at the Perón family dinner table.

9

JEAN-BÉDEL BOKASSA The cannibal former president of the Central African Republic once served political opponents up to unwitting visiting dignitaries as “roast beef.”

10

IDI AND SARAH AMIN In 1999, London restaurateur Sarah Amin, the ex-wife of former Ugandan dictator Idi, was found to be running a kitchen with a “heavy and active” cockroach and mouse infestation, and her establishment was closed down by health officials. She was, at least, a better fellow dining prospect than her husband. Guests at the home of Uganda’s president were
17

[History’s Ten Least Appealing Dinner Dates]

treated to some unscheduled entertainment by their host one evening in August 1972, when between courses Amin suddenly vanished into the kitchen and returned with the frozen head of his former commander in chief, Brigadier Hussein. Amin screamed abuse and threw silverware at the head, then asked his guests to leave.

18

Ten 10

Historic Drunks

1

NOAH According to the Old Testament, Noah was the first person ever to get drunk.

2

KING SCORPION I OF EGYPT The Pharaohs loved their wine. In 3500 b.c., his royal highness’s cadaver was entombed with seven hundred bottles of resin-infused hooch to help ease his journey into the afterlife.

3

SOCRATES (469–399 BC) The great philosopher had a legendary ability to hold his liquor and would continue to philosophize when everyone else at the symposium had long since passed out or gone home.

4

ALEXANDER THE GREAT (356–323 BC) The

Macedonian king who ruled an empire stretching from Greece to India was in his lifetime as famous for his marathon drinking sessions as for his military conquests.

During one of Alexander’s drinking contests thirty-five men died; during another he killed one of his best friends with a spear. His close friend Hephaestion expired after drinking half a gallon of wine for breakfast; Alexander dropped dead after a drinking contest at the age of thirty-two.

5

POPE BENEDICT XII (C. 1334–42) The pontiff was such a hardened boozer that the expression “drunk as a pope” became popular in his lifetime.

6

SELIM II, SULTAN OF THE OTTOMANS

(R. 1566–74) Also known as “Selim the Sot,” he could drink a bottle of Cyprus wine without drawing a breath.

When he ran out of his favorite drink, someone
19

[Ten Historic Drunks]

suggested he capture Cyprus to replenish his stocks.

Selim agreed and massacred thirty thousand Cypriot Christians in the process.

7

EMPRESS CATHERINE I, CZARINA OF RUSSIA

(R. 1725–27) While shuffling through her two-year reign in a drunken haze, she once survived an assassination attempt, too drunk to realize that anything had happened. She was reviewing a Guards regiment when a bullet flew past her and struck an innocent bystander dead. The Empress moved on without flinching.

8

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)

The composer died of hepatic cirrhosis of the liver as a result of alcoholism at the age of fifty-seven. Before he expired, he cheerily announced, “Wine is both necessary and good for me.”

9

PRESIDENT ANDREW JOHNSON, U.S.

PRESIDENT (1865–69) He was apparently drunk at his swearing-in as vice president to Lincoln, and his acceptance speech was rambling and largely incoherent; he claimed later that he had been taking alcoholic medicine prescribed for a cold. He didn’t make his own inaugural address: When the U.S. chief justice was sent to tell him that Lincoln was dead and that he was now president, they found him trying to shake off a terrible hangover. Johnson took the oath of office as required but then fell asleep and had to be dressed and carried to the White House.

20

[Ten Historic Drunks]

10

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL (1874–1965) Britain’s great wartime leader began each day with a glass of Riesling with his breakfast, then kept himself topped up with whiskey until the early hours of the following day.

A doctor attending him after he was knocked down by a car in New York in 1931 actually issued a medical note that his convalescence “necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits especially at mealtimes,” specifying 250cc per day as the minimum. Although it wrecked his health, he liked to brag, “I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.”

21

Ten Ex 10

clusive Beverages

1

Three Penis Wine, one of several multi-penis wines produced in China, is made from one part seal penis, one part dog penis, and four parts deer penis. Said to be an elixir of great repute for flagging lovers, it is also an allegedly effective cure for anemia, shingles, and memory loss.

2

The world’s most exclusive beverage is made from a coffee bean that has passed through the digestive tract of a cat. The excretions of the palm civet cat are collected from around the coffee plantations of Indonesia and are sold at around $75 a cup. Luckily for coffee drinkers, the palm civet ingests only the very ripest beans, and then internal fermentation by enzymes adds a unique flavor and removes a source of coffee’s natural bitterness. The beans are then passed whole and unsullied into the cat’s poo.

3

The Yukon Territory in Canada is the home of the Sour Toe Cocktail, which has only two ingredients: an amputated human toe and the spirit of your choice. The only rule is “you can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but the lips have got to touch the toe.” The original artifact, discovered in a disused log cabin by a Mountie in 1973, was used in the drink more than seven hundred times before it was accidentally swallowed by a miner.

4

The Tomb of Mausalus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, destroyed by earthquake, was built in 353 b.c. in Turkey by Queen Artemisia on the death of her husband, King Mausalus. The king’s body was to have been placed
22

[Ten Exclusive Beverages]

in the tomb but there was a last minute change of plan.

His wife had him cremated, then she poured his ashes into a goblet of wine and drank the lot. (We memorialize Mausalus today with our word “mausoleum.”) 5

Cow urine is sold in India as a sedative; as a cure for cancer, AIDS, tuberculosis; and as an antiseptic aftershave.