Broken Wing

Revisionist celebrity gossip

A recent publication suggests that William Shakespeare may have had syphillis, and treatments for it may have shortened his career. The evidence is that his descriptions in his fictional writings were clinically very precise, and in one of his journals he writes: "You know what really sucks? Syphillis. Seriously, it's terrible. I hate it."

In other news, a recent book contends that Abraham Lincoln may have been gay. He apparently slept in the same bed with a man for several years. Well, he probably got up occasionally to pee. Unfortunately, it is his homosexuality that ultimately led to his assassination. Originally, he was scheduled to go to a boat show on the night he was killed, but he insisted on the theatre.

Anybody who does any history at all knows that events like this happen in threes, and if there only seems to be two just wait. So it is just a matter of time before we find out something new and surprising about another beloved historical figure. Here are some possibilities:

• Babe Ruth was a marsupial.
• Gandhi secretly loved violence. Behind closed doors he was always breaking chairs over the backs of subordinates.
• Aristotle didn't do most of Plato's reading assignments, opting on many occasions to read the Cliff notes instead.
• Martin Luther originally had 100 theses (nice round number), but five of them fell out of his satchel on the way to the church. The five missing theses include: (1) A statement which admonishes the Pope for not sending Luther the new drapes for the rectory, and (2) A request to expand the trinity to a quaternary by adding Barry, Jesus's favorite uncle, who would buy him wine when he was a teenager.

Posted by mill1991 at January 16, 2005 01:09 PM | TrackBack