This week’s killer list is a closer look at the darker side of the human-animal relationship. Enjoy!
1. Caligula’s horse. After being appointed to the Senate, this animal became the first proponent of the theory we now know as “trickle-down economics” before a financial scandal forced him to retire.
2. Van Gogh’s duck. Because the artist was convinced the duck was lucky, he agreed to all of its demands, including the drunken request that Van Gogh pay it the tribute of an ear.
3. Poker ace Derek Barlow’s dogs. After he taught them the basics of poker, Derek became convinced that his dogs were concocting a sinister plan. He photographed and painted them obsessively in order to work out the “code” by which they worked out the details of this plan.
4. The princess’s frog. After meeting in a wood, the princess and her frog enjoyed a whirlwind romance, culminating in marriage. The rumours that the frog turned back into a man were not true, but were put about by courtiers attempting to protect the princess from the court priests, whose powers were in the ascendant at the time. The Princess seldom left her chambers after the marriage, but when she did, she was usually green. She died of suffocation, from too liberal an application of green paint over her entire skin. It is now assumed that the frog was a member of the Bufonidae family, and that the princess spent her last months in a hallucinatory state.
5. The red deer stag pictured on the front of the Irish one pound coin (before the currency switched to Euro) was from a herd of deer which roamed freely through Dublin’s Phoenix Park. On the occasion of Lady Gregory’s visit to Dublin for the opening of her play in the Abbey Theatre in 1904, she was taking a stroll through the Phoenix Park when she was accosted by a group of men of ruffianly aspect. The stage snuck up behind them and bellowed, startling the men and giving Lady Gregory time to escape. For this act it was honoured with a place on Irish currency.
It features on this list of infamous pets as research has since revealed that the stag was in fact two soldiers in a deer costume, who were attempting to molest red deer hinds.
6. McCormick’s pig. McCormick was Ireland’s most famous butcher, even supplying the Irish president himself with pork. The pork came from McCormick’s prize pig, which sliced the meat from its own living body. It is infamous because its vaunted power of regeneration came from a steady diet of human children.
7. Gandhi’s elephant. The famous pacifist was forced to give his pet away after it developed the distressing habit of slapping people in the face while its owner was talking to them.
8. Dracula’s bat is responsible for the belief that vampires can turn themselves into bats. Vampires can shrink themselves to the size of a Capuchin monkey’s thumb, but cannot change shape. Dracula devised the strategy of training his bat to sleep hanging off the back of his cape. At the first sign of danger, Dracula would shrink. The bat, woken by the sense of falling, would awaken and fly away, thus creating the illusion that Dracula had “transformed.”
9. Italian dictator Mussolini had a pet brick to which he was greatly attached, and which he named “Litle Benito.” This is the origin of the common saying that if you want a reasonable, intelligent answer you should “ask little Benny,” as it was understood among Mussolini’s entourage that the brick was the more intelligent and well-balanced of the two.
10. The Queen’s swans. It is well known that swans on the Thames belong to the Queen. It is less well-known that each swan represents a year of the Queen’s life. On her birthday the previous year is decanted into a fresh swan in a painful process which the sovereign undergoes with the aim of distributing her quintessential Englishness throughout the country.
The “infamous” swans are the Anni horribilis 1981, 1992 and 1997.
In other news: Tomorrow, Friday the 19th of November, Richard Cheese (“America’s Loudest Lounge Singer”) will be performing his first ever livestream concert! Regardless of what you thought about the rest of the film, there’s no doubt that Richard’s “Viva Las Vegas” was the best bit of Army of the Dead, so you know I’ll be shaking – but not stirring – my booty to Richard Cheese this Friday. Get your tickets here!
Diesmal sage ich “Hut ab”.
Dies sind Erklärungen zu Personen,die mit Ihrem Wirken die Aufmerksamkeit der Welt auf sich richteten.
Der Leser erhält mit den wunderbar formulierten Informationen zusätzlich aufklärend Kenntnis darüber,wie und warum evtl . Wahres mystisch erscheinen lässt!
Ist es wahr oder nicht?
Gelungene Präsentation!