Bizarre History (4 page)

NOTE:
Late in life, William fought more bravely in the dining room than on the battlefield. He became so corpulent that King Philip I of France said that he looked like a pregnant woman.

Peter I of Russia (1672–1725) deserved being called “the Great” for many reasons. He was the father of Russian modernization and expansion that transformed Russia into an empire and major European power. Unfortunately for Alexei, Peter was also father of … Alexei. Brought up by his mother, who didn’t much care for Peter, Alexei was torn from her at age nine, when Peter sent her to a convent. Alexei fled Russia as an adult, and when suspected of masterminding a plot to overthrow the tsar, he was tracked down, captured, and returned to his home country for a few rounds of torture. Alexei confessed during the torture, and died before he could be put to death. Thanks, Dad!

In October 1710, the same Peter the Great had the pleasure of marrying off his niece Anna Ivanovna to Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Couland. He threw a lavish banquet that lasted two days. Soon after, he held another lavish wedding, this time for the royal dwarf Iakim Volkov and his dwarf bride. See, the six-foot, seven-inch tsar had a thing for dwarfs. Some might say he collected them. He had dwarf servants and entertainers surrounding him. He liked surprising his guests by having naked dwarfs jump out of giant pies, and some historians say he was interested in breeding a race of small people. So, needless to say, this dwarf wedding was a big deal for the tsar.

Back in August of 1710, he had instructed all the dwarfs in Moscow to be rounded up and sent to St. Petersburg. They were “given” to the lords and ladies of his court, who were told to care for them and make sure they were dressed in the latest Western fashion. When the wedding took place in November, seventy dwarfs were in attendance. During the ceremony, the full-sized guests remained on the sidelines and laughed—especially since Peter made sure that elements of the wedding resembled his niece’s recent nuptials. At the feast, the dwarfs sat at miniature tables in the center of the hall, while again the full-sized guests watched from the sidelines, roaring with laughter as the dwarfs danced, drank, and even brawled. Crazy? Certainly. Mean-spirited? Definitely. But was there a deeper meaning to his madness? Could it be that Peter was using the dwarf wedding as a mirror held up to the laughing lords and ladies, who, though they thought themselves cultured, couldn’t yet hold a candle to the European elite? Hmm …

SIDE NOTE:
Not to appear overly attentive to people of diminutive stature, Peter also threw a wedding for a seven-foot, six-inch giant named Nicolas Bourgeois who he found in France. He then located a Finnish giantess for Nicolas, but since giants were more difficult to find than dwarfs, Peter didn’t insist on a basketball player wedding party. The tsar was disappointed when the couple didn’t produce any huge children, but he kept Bourgeois on salary just to have him show up at his wacky parties and ceremonies … sometimes dressed as a baby.

Anna Ivanovna, Peter the Great’s niece, ruled Russia from 1730 until her death in 1740. She didn’t care much for actually ruling Russia, but she enjoyed parties and tormenting the aristocracy. Her court included a nobleman who was not only forced to be her fool, but also had to pretend to be a chicken—all the time. But that wasn’t enough. She ordered an ice palace built for a marriage that she arranged (she liked arranging and throwing lavish weddings) between this “fool” and one of her elderly maids. Anna wasn’t done yet! The bride and groom had to dress as clowns, and then they and the wedding party had to sleep naked in the ice palace during a typically freezing-cold Russian night.

NOSOCOMEPHOBIA:
Richard Nixon was deathly afraid of hospitals. In 1974, he initially refused to go to a hospital to get treatment for a blood clot. He said at the time, “If I go into the hospital, I’ll never come out alive.” (Wonder what the word for “fear of Richard Nixon” is.)

TAPHEPHOBIA:
George Washington had no problem risking his life for American independence from Britain, but he was terrified by the prospect of being buried alive. Upon his deathbed in 1799, he made one of his attendants promise that his body would be left alone for two days after expiring, just in case. (But then again, due to the primitive nature of medical care at the time, it did happen every once in a while and wasn’t such a bizarre thing to be scared of.)

AEROPHOBIA:
Kim Jong Il won’t fly anywhere due to his fear of flying. He travels mostly on his personal rail car. He has traveled as far as Moscow this way. Kim “got” his fear honestly: He was in a helicopter crash in 1976 in which he was seriously injured. Ronald Reagan and Joseph Stalin were also afraid of flying.

CLAUSTROPHOBIA:
Muammar al-Qaddafi supposedly freaks out in confined spaces and is much more comfortable remaining outdoors in a tent than checked into a hotel. While attending a United Nations General Assembly meeting in 2009, Qaddafi tried to set up his tent in New York City in several different locations (Donald Trump even offered him some land to use).

AILUROPHOBIA:
Afraid of cats? Then you’re an ailurophobe … just like Napoleon Bonaparte. Other famous ailurophobes included Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Julius Caesar, and Benito Mussolini.

CYNOPHOBIA:
Chancellor Merkel of Germany was bitten by a dog as a child, and has been deeply afraid of dogs since. Former Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, with this information in hand, once offered a dog as a gift to the chancellor. He would also let his black Lab sit in on their meetings.

TRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA:
He may have said, “The only thing you have to fear is fear itself,” but Franklin Delano Roosevelt was afraid of something else: the number thirteen. He avoided hosting dinner parties with thirteen people, and he refused to travel on the thirteenth.

Charles VI was crowned King of France in 1380 at just eleven years old. At first, he was called Charles the Beloved, but by the end of his life, he was Charles the Mad. Most likely he suffered from schizophrenia, especially since his psychotic episodes began in young adulthood and included paranoid delusions.

His first known episode happened in 1392 while on a personal mission to avenge the attempted murder of one of his advisors. As he and his escort traveled through a forest, a page dropped the king’s lance, which made a loud noise. Charles drew his sword and yelled, “Forward against the traitors! They wish to deliver me to the enemy!” He then began hacking away at his small army, killing at least one knight and, most likely, several more. When finally wrestled to the ground, he quickly went into a coma.

Charles recovered, but his bouts continued. Other episodes included forgetting that he was king, not remembering his wife, claiming his name was George, running through the corridors of his palace (to the point where the entrances were barricaded), refusing to bathe or change his clothes for five months, thinking he was made of glass, and more. Charles died in 1422, and he most likely passed his illness to his grandson, Henry VI of England.

SIDE NOTE:
Henry VI, King of England and disputed King of France, at one point became completely unaware of
anything
that was going on around him. This lasted for more than a year.

Not one but two future presidents of the United States had close encounters with unidentified flying objects. We’ll begin with Jimmy Carter’s sighting. In 1969, while governor of Georgia, Carter claims that he and several other men were standing outside the Lion’s Club in Leary, Georgia, when they saw a strange red and green orb in the sky. I’ll let Jimmy tell you the rest.

This was part of his speech at the 1976 Southern Governors Conference while campaigning for president.

Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan was the first US president to talk about the world uniting against a threat from “a power from outer space.” Some may have thought he was just losing his marbles, but he was speaking from personal experience. His first encounter happened before he was governor of California. He was on his way to a party at actor William Holden’s home in Hollywood when he and his wife, Nancy, pulled over to watch a strange light in the sky. They arrived at the party and told everyone of their UFO sighting. Reagan’s second sighting was in 1974 while aboard the governor’s private plane. They were heading toward Bakersfield, California, when one of his aides noticed a bright white light near the plane. Everyone aboard, including the pilot, watched in amazement as whatever it was then shot upward very quickly. Reagan actually told the story to the Washington Bureau Chief of the
Wall Street Journal,
Norman C. Miller. “It was a bright white light. We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden, to our utter amazement, it went straight up into the heavens.” Miller verified the amazing claim with the pilot, who corroborated it.

If aliens invade (or just come for a short visit), we’ll want to impress them with our fearless leaders. But for every Lincoln, Churchill, and Clinton, there are at least a couple Billy Carters in the woodwork. These are the people related to the important people, the ones who show who we really are as a race: numbskulls and imbeciles, drunkards and liars, failures and egomaniacs. In other words, they are a lot more human than their overachieving relatives.

He was a gifted student, a high-school basketball star, devout Christian, successful farmer, and—oh yeah—president of the United States. How can one live up to an older brother like that? In Billy Carter’s case, you don’t. During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, his younger brother, Billy, was often in the news, and always for the wrong reasons. Known as a colorful, hard-drinking, good ol’ boy with his “Redneck Power” T-shirt, Billy first cashed in by endorsing Billy Beer, the first (and only) beer named for a president’s family member. He was then caught urinating on an airport runway in full view of the press and foreign dignitaries. He once participated in and judged a world championship belly flop competition. Finally, there was Billygate (one of the first of many “- gates” to follow Watergate): Billy accepted money from the Libyan government in return for his influence with his brother. He was eventually registered as a foreign agent of the Libyan government.

Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s wife, was known to be slightly unhinged, and later in life she was actually institutionalized by her son Robert. For one thing, she had a clothing obsession: in one four-month period she supposedly bought three hundred pairs of gloves. She was quick to anger and often took it out on her husband: at least once she threw stove wood at him, and another time chased him out of their home in Springfield, Illinois, with a butcher knife. She also spent exorbitant amounts of money redecorating the White House while the Civil War was going on.