1. Alexander the Great
You hear a lot about ancient peoples and their feasts/orgies. It seems it is all true and Alexander was a big fan. After a full night of feasting he was on his way to bed when he ran into a friend of his who invited him to another feast! All in all, Alexander ate and drank for two days straight, barely sleeping, and only stopping because he fell ill. That’s right, if possible he would have KEPT EATING. And he wasn’t poisoned. Poisons at the time were slow acting; you needed access to someone’s food for months in order to have a hope of killing them. Alexander fell ill suddenly and died after only 10 days.
2. Zachary Taylor
One of the lesser known American presidents, Taylor is perhaps most important for sharing his name with the original Black Power Ranger. Seriously though, that is one of the most interesting things about this guy. Anyway, 16 months after his election the 12th President of the United States was enjoying a 4th of July celebration in the capital where he ate copious amounts of iced milk and cherries. It was a very hot summer’s day and the huge amount of fresh dairy and fruit he consumed obviously did not agree with him. He grew ill later that night and died five days later. The official cause of death was gastroenteritis.
3. Mozart
Thanks to the movie Amadeus, most people are familiar with the story that Salieri, a composer rival of Mozart’s, killed him out of jealousy of his talent. While there is evidence they didn’t like each other much, nothing points to murder. Instead the great composer may have been killed by eating too many undercooked pork chops! Dr. Jan. V. Hirschmann compared a letter Mozart wrote shortly before his death about eating lots of chops and his symptoms to that of trichinosis, a deadly disease caused by worms in undercooked pork. While this is the latest in the over 150 theories on how he died, the world will never know. Seven years after his death Mozart’s grave was dug up for reuse and his bones scattered.
4. Adolf Fredrick
Adolf Frederick was the King of Sweden from 1751-1771. Twenty years after taking the throne he had an extravagant meal in which he ate numerous servings of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, kippers and champagne. OK, it’s a lot, but is it much more than what the average American eats at Thanksgiving? Well, Adolf Fredrick was just saving room for his favorite dessert, which he had FOURTEEN servings of. He died of digestive problems later that night and is still know to Swedish schoolchildren as “the King who ate himself to death”.
5. Henry I
Henry was King of England from 1100-1135. While it was possible he killed his brother in a hunting accident to become king, he was not known as an over eater. However, one night for whatever reason he overdid it and famously ate “a surfeit of lampreys”, those weird sucking fish that attach to sharks. He died in agony.
6. William Makepeace Thackeray
Thackeray, the author of Vanity Fair (the book, not the magazine) was a notorious glutton; he regularly overate. This regularly caused havoc with his gastrointestinal system. He could not break his addiction to spicy peppers, further ruining his digestion. After enjoying one last enormous meal he was found dead in his bed the next morning, felled at the relatively young age of 52, entirely unexpectedly. While the official cause of death was a stroke, it was most likely brought on by the stress his gluttony put on his body.
Written by Katherine Benjamin – Copyrighted © www.weirdworm.com
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You do realize you are linking to the picture of the Black Power Ranger and not the president who went by Zachary? Proofread much? Otherwise it would’ve been a good article
LOL! Thank you for correction! We will change photo and link now. LOL again
Sorry ladies and gents, but I believe this little article has been lifted from another web site. Cracked perhaps?
Considering I write for Cracked I can promise it was not.
well prove it
You might want to learn to check your sources better, take for example Henry I. Remoras are the fish that attach to sharks and scavenge off the scraps of the shark feeding and are not often eaten by people. Lampreys are a parasitic eel that mostly prey on smaller fish. The text was also most likely mistaken in that lampreys have never really been a food item but the hagfish, another similar creature, is eaten all over the world and has been for centuries.
How is it accurate to say that 52 was a relatively young age for a man to die in Thackerays time? Up until quite recent times it would not be thought uncommon for a man to die in his 50’s or even his 40’s. I enjoyed this but it is neccesary to have some perspective about life expectancy in the 19th century.
Actually the AVERAGE life expectancy for men in the USA/England in the 1860’s would have been about 55 and since Thackeray was an upper class man and not a factory worker his class’s average would have been much higher.
I stopped reading at Alexander the Great. No one knows how Alexander the Great died, but its pretty accpepted that it was probably Malaria. Not overeating.
Once I overate and you know what happened. I vomited. I didn’t fall ill for 10 days. I vomited and then was fine.
I refuse to read on, because the Alexander one is stupid. And Alexander was a very active strong man. He was in no way obese.