Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Today In History: The Scourge of God...

...hits his high water mark.

Fifteen hundred and fifty-six years ago, Attila and his Hunnish hordes got stomped at the Battle of Campus Mauriacus by an army led by Theodoric I and Aetius the Last Roman. France was kept safe for indoor plumbing for the next two thousand years.

Two years later, Attila would be dead of a nosebleed after a night of drunken partying and nookie, making him the prototype for generations of rock 'n' roll drummers to come.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

That last paragraph was definitely a keeper!

LBJ said...

And what of Francis Bacon: One of the most influential minds of the late 16th century.

How he died: Stuffing snow into a chicken

One afternoon in 1625, Bacon was watching a snowstorm and was struck by the wondrous notion that maybe snow could be used to preserve meat in the same way that salt was used. Determined to find out, he purchased a chicken from a nearby village, killed it, and then, standing outside in the snow, attempted to stuff the chicken full of snow to freeze it. The chicken never froze, but Bacon did.

Tam said...

That always made me wonder what "Hey, y'all! Watch this!" sounds like with an Elizabethan accent...

Anonymous said...

Or Tycho Brahe -- died of burst bladder. Plus he had a prosthetic silver nose.

Anonymous said...

Sourge ="Scourge"?

Tam said...

"Sourge ="Scourge"?"

D'oh!

Stupid typos!