History's Strangest Deaths: A Half-Arsed History book

(Paperback)

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Description

Death, as a concept, is something that captivates and terrifies us. In talking or reading about death, we contemplate our own mortality, we explore our curiosity of the unknown, we reflect on the nature of our existence. History's Strangest Deaths isn't a particularly highbrow or philosophical work, but it nonetheless taps into the primal fascination we have with death, as something that is an unavoidable part of being human.

History's Strangest Deaths highlights the many and varied ways that people have met their end over the years, from the foolish to the unfortunate.

From an ancient Greek painter dying of laughter to an ancient Chinese duke falling into toilets; from a viking raiders being bitten by a severed head to a lawyers shooting himself to prove a legal point; from the two French kings who were killed by door frames to the two British parliamentarians who were killed by turnips - there are countless amusing, farcical, absurd, and ultimately very strange deaths from across history. History's Strangest Deaths offers fifty of the best of them, spanning thousands of years of history to recent times.

The debut book from Riley Knight, host of the popular podcast Half-Arsed History, History's Strangest Deaths is proof of the old saying: comedy equals tragedy plus time.

Author Bio

Riley Knight is the host of Half-Arsed History, a weekly podcast highlighting absurd and entertaining stories from history. Born in Melbourne, Victoria, Riley became a primary school teacher after finishing his mostly-useless Arts degree, and began Half-Arsed History as a hobby while teaching grade three. The podcast has only grown since then, with millions of downloads across the world, live shows across Australia, and now its very own book.

After spending almost a decade living in Europe, Riley now lives on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, and consistently produces three episodes of Half-Arsed History every week (except when the cricket is on, at which time he produces them inconsistently). He likes historically-themed video games, running, and - rather obviously - books.