Historical Deaths:
Many people say history is boring, and it is, but that’s not history’s fault; it is boring school books and memorizing dates. Real history is filled with crazy nutters; below are some of history’s strange, weird, and ironically funny deaths.
King Francis II of France. He was king for one year and would most likely be forgotten today if not for two facts. One, he was the first husband to Mary Stuart, aka Mary Queen of Scots. Two, he died of an ear infection. …
Henry Stuart was the second husband to Mary Queen of Scots, and his death was due to gunpowder. The gunpowder was in two large barrels directly under his sleeping quarters; while staying at Kirk o’ Field, in the middle of the night, the barrels went off, by accident, I’m sure. Best not to ask about the third husband, hint it didn’t end well.
John Priest, the man who wouldn’t sink. He worked on the Titanic when it went down in 1912, the RMS Alcantara when it sank in 1913, the Britannic when it went down in 1916, HMHS Asturias in 1917, and then the Donegal that sunk in 1917. After that, I’m sure people didn’t let him on boats or ships of any kind. He died on dry land in 1937 from Pneumonia.
Marie Curie, her death is sad with a tinge of irony. She is the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes, and she named polonium after her country of birth, Poland. Her work in radioactivity also leads to her death from Aplastic anemia. Her final resting place is in Paris, France, in the Pantheon. She and her husband remain in a lead line container to ward off vampires…not really because they are still radioactive. She also created mobile X-Ray machines after studying Radiology, anatomy, and automotive mechanics to help wounded soldiers in WWI.
Qin Shi Huang, First Emperor of Qin, is known to us as the guy buried with the famed Terracotta Army. He died from ingesting mercury pills, which he believed would make him the greatest singer in the world! Sorry, wrong mercury; he ingested mercury because he thought mercury to be an elixir of immortality. This is where it gets weird; the Emperor was touring his lands when he died, and his Chancellor Li Si was afraid of an uprising if the news came out while they were so far from the capital. So Li Si, one of the Emperor’s Sons and 5 or 6 eunuchs Weekend of Bernie’s the Emperor corpse to the capitol. It was a two-month journey back to the capital, and they had two carriages of rotting fish traveling in front of and behind the Emperor’s carriage (to cover up the decaying smell). The eunuchs would “change his clothes” and bring him “meals,” the shades in the carriage were lower to keep people from looking in. Remember this was back in the day when you had massive luggage trains when royalty travels, enough to hold a mini castle for the Emperor, his favorite food and chefs, a bed, loads of clothes, personal guards, so it’s a hoard of people they fooled. See, I told you it would get weird. Wonder if this inspired Weekend of Bernie’s?