Bizarre History (6 page)

Beat a citizen who insulted him with a heavy chain—every day for three months. He only stopped because the man had become so gangrenous that he smelled horribly. So Caligula had him beheaded.

Tortured countless people. He was partial to sawing people by filleting them at the spine. Or he’d restrain a prisoner upside down and chew on his testicles while the prisoner was still in ownership of them.

Most likely committed incest with all three of his sisters. When one of his sisters died, he had her deified.

SIDE NOTE:
Caligula, whose real name was Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, was nicknamed “Caligula” as a baby by Roman soldiers. His father, the general Germanicus, would take the young boy with him on military campaigns and dress him up in a miniature soldier’s uniform. The soldiers called him “little soldier’s boot,” or Caligula.

Justin II, Byzantine Emperor from 565–578 CE, had a lot on his plate. War (most of it disastrous for his empire), political restlessness, and financial ruin finally took a toll on Justin, and he cracked. Before abdicating the throne, he had taken to biting his attendants while being pulled through his palace on a wheeled throne. In fact, rumor has it he didn’t just like biting people—he also liked eating them.

Most likely not mad—merely eccentric—Ludwig II, King of Bavaria, ruled from 1864 until his death in 1886. He hated public functions, insisting on watching full-scale operatic performances by himself because he didn’t like people staring at him. He liked traveling the countryside to converse with the common folk he met along the way. He also used all of his personal fortune to build several elaborate, fairy-tale castles. Ludwig built the Residenz Palace in Munich, complete with an elaborate winter garden with a lake on the roof; New Swan Stone Castle, a Romanesque fortress in his hometown of Hohenschwangau, featuring wall paintings depicting scenes from Wagner’s operas; Linderhof Castle, an ornate neo-French rococo-style palace; and Herrenchiemsee, a replica of Louis XIV’s seven hundred–room palace at Versailles that was never finished because Ludwig ran out of money. He also had plans for several other over-the-top palaces.

Ludwig racked up millions in personal debt, and that, along with his eccentricities, was enough for conspirators to seek to get rid of him. A laundry list of bizarre behavior was compiled (including childish table manners, making his groomsmen dance naked at moonlit picnics, and talking to imaginary friends), doctors were engaged to pronounce Ludwig insane, and on June 10, 1886, a government commission deposed the king. By the thirteenth, he was dead. To this day, no one knows if he committed suicide or was murdered. He is remembered favorably today, especially by Germany’s tourist industry.

SIDE NOTE:
Ludwig’s brother Otto became king next; however, he never truly ruled because he suffered from severe mental illness. I can’t verify this story, but it’s too good to pass up. The insane king-in-name-only supposedly started each day by shooting a peasant. His attendants, not wanting to upset him but not wanting to make a daily sacrifice either, made sure the pistol was loaded with blanks, and then they’d dress someone up like a peasant and have them drop dramatically to the ground after the shot.

While campaigning for the presidency, someone once threw a cabbage at William Howard Taft. He quickly responded, “I see that one of my adversaries has lost his head.”

Dorothy Parker, seated next to President Calvin Coolidge at a dinner, supposedly remarked, “Mr. Coolidge, I’ve made a bet against a fellow who said it was impossible to get more than two words out of you.” He replied, “You lose.” Upon his death, Parker was said to have remarked, “How can they tell?”

During the Civil War, President Lincoln was annoyed at general George McClellan’s hesitancy to engage the enemy. Lincoln wrote to him, “If you don’t want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while.”

“When the president does it, that means that it’s not illegal.” —Richard Nixon

“I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I’m in a Cabinet meeting.”—Ronald Reagan

“I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can’t get my wife to go swimming.”—Jimmy Carter

Frederick II of Hehenstaufen was one of the most powerful Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages. He was known as the Wonder of the World for his incredible knowledge and curiosity, love of literature and science, his skeptical views about religion, and for his ability to speak at least six languages. While ruling much of Europe and throwing together the occasional Crusade, he had time for indulging his curiosity with some fairly cruel (even by Middle Ages standards) science experiments.

As a linguist, he wished to know whether people were born with a natural language that was suppressed when they learned the language of the land. In other words, what language did Adam and Eve speak? Hebrew? Greek? Latin? Frederick sought to answer this question by ordering a number of infants raised without any adults talking to them—at all. He ordered, “foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children, but in no ways to prattle or speak with them.” The experiment was considered a failure, for “the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments.”