From each era we've done on Worst Ways to Die.

Every episode there's one that kind of stands out as the funniest.

Yeah, we should do one at the end, but we take a clip from each one and just kind of mush them together.

Yes.

Worst ways to die of all time or best worst ways to die or something like that that.

'D be funny and we should have like a competition at the end.

We like who?

Really.

The tops, the.

Worst out of that group because it's like Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

In some way, shape or form, it always involves a bird.

You might be right about that.

Oh, no, it's a.

It's a.

Nah, I.

Can't wait for this one.

No, but still, so far the the track record's pretty good involving birds.

Right.

It's crazy.

Are we ready for this?

Yes.

All right, well, welcome back Looky Loos, Freaky Friends, Deadly Darlings, Makaba hotties to another episode of Macabre, a dark history podcast, where on this episode the wigs are high, the hygiene is questionable, and deaths are absolutely insane because what else would you expect?

And this week we're going back to the Baroque period.

The Baroque period span roughly between 1600 to 1750 and was marked by dramatic flair, extravagant art and over the top everything.

Originating in Italy and spreading across Europe, It was an age of ornate architecture, theatrical music, Bach and Vivaldi just to name a couple, and fashion was so extra it could kill you.

Literally.

This era was defined by absolute monarchies, religious tension, and a whole lot of performative opulence.

Think corsets tight enough to crack your ribs, wigs tall enough to touch the heavens, and powdered faces that could poison you.

And in short, the Baroque period was bold, beautiful, and often deadly in the most absurd ways possible.

Oh man, I'm excited.

So grab your powdered wig, tighten that corset, and prepare for tales of duels, digestion, disasters, and a royal throne of the porcelain kind.

Oh no.

Also with the digestion.

Why?

Why?

Stands the test of time.

Just keeps coming back around like the damn birds.

No.

All right, well, let's kick things off with duels in the broke way of saying I respectfully want to murder you at dawn.

Respectively.

Respectively, That was such a thoughtful thing.

Proper way to kill somebody, right?

You're like, you're going down, let me pull up my schedule.

Yeah, this didn't happen.

And they're like, well, what's what's your availability for possible death?

Let me write that in.

Would you say 8?

OK, Yeah.

The sun might be a little too high at that point.

I don't know.

Let's talk about dusk.

I like death before dusk.

Wait, dawn?

I got that messed up.

But Death Before Dusk sounds like a like a metal band or.

Something that's awesome.

We need a baroque period high like wig death before dusk.

We really do.

That'll be hilarious.

Take note, David.

Yes.

We also need one now that says I want to kill you in a duel respectively.

Oh God we haven't even gotten started yet.

My face is like get red at this point.

Well, back then men, usually nobility, dueled over everything as we know.

Honor, insults love.

Someone breathing too loudly at a harpsichord concert.

Hasten point.

Joseph Francois Dufour, a French playwright who in 17 O2 got into a duel because a critic called his comedy 2 Derivatives.

Which, fair, but Dufour was so offended he challenged the guy to a duel and it did not go well.

He tripped over his own Cape and impaled himself with his own rapier.

That's right, he died.

By dramatic irony.

The critic didn't even get a chance to raise a sword.

Could you have me showing up to watch that go down?

Yeah.

And then everybody goes, oh.

Oh, and the Craig goes like, see, I told you, best duel ever.

That's almost there's the next one known as the infamous fork duel.

Yes, you heard that.

You've heard that right.

This one happened in Poland in 1694.

Two noblemen were arguing at dinner, too drunk to find their sores.

So they got their forks out and stabbed each other, and one of them bled out and the other one got tetanus.

Oh my God.

So there were no winners in this case.

Oh my gosh.

A duel with a Rusty.

Fork shit.

I don't know which was better, the guy tripping over his own, you know, Cape and impaling himself, or the fork duel.

We'll leave that up to you listeners to decide which one you think is best.

Yeah.

Well, if the dueling didn't get you back, then your digestive system just might.

We've heard this before in other eras, how you know things can go really wrong.

And with us both having digestive issues, this is not unrealistic at all.

So we're going to talk about King George the Second of Great Britain.

I'm trying.

Really.

Hard.

The Blair apparently already knows this story, but I do he he went out in a way that's almost too poetic.

Picture it, the king wakes up, drinks hot chocolate, sits on the royal throne, and by throne I mean toilet and dies instantly.

Doctors at the time said it was a rupture of the right ventricle, but the autopsy notes are far more graphic.

He had the digestive issues and his intestines were so distended with gas they think he suffered what's called an abdominal aortic aneurysm.

Basically, his bowels were so full of gas that they exploded.

Yeah.

The royal thong, What happened?

His surreal said.

His last words might have been aggression or a toot.

No one knows.

I think he probably screamed.

Oh yeah, I'm guessing it was awful.

Right.

I can't imagine.

I can't imagine.

And then oh.

No, no go.

Ahead, I want to hear the rest.

I'm just like, can you, I mean literally going out with a bang.

Like I just just knowing that after the fact, like surrounding countries did not let them live.

That down for.

No, no, Yeah.

That's like the most dishonorable way to die, I think, as a member of royalty.

Right?

Yeah.

And then it's continuing on with digestive issues.

There's Adolf Frederick of Sweden, or as we like to call him, the man who died by pastry on Fat Tuesday, no less, of 1771.

This guy decided to have one final feast.

He had lobster caviar kippers, which I don't know what kippers are, but OK, OK, champagne, and then topped it off with 14 semla buns, 14 pastries each served in hot milk.

14 is not a snack.

No, that is like, I'm not going to eat for days.

Ever again.

That's because hours later he collapsed and the official cause of death was written as digestive complications.

Unofficial cause death by dessert.

Just get the whole damn bakery in it, holy shit And.

Holy shit.

First of all, that's a lot of fish.

Like you're going to have the ocean in there, lobster and.

Yeah, other just.

Flap a bakery in there.

I wonder how big this guy was, like not, you know, not that it matters because like your stomach is only doesn't matter what what size you are.

But I'm just thinking like, just seeing him, I just want to know how much he could fit in there, you know?

For I know.

For scale.

If I can look at a painting.

So Adolf Frederick of Sweden, king of Simla.

OK, Simla being the buns, the pastries, king of the pastries.

King of the piss.

Oh, oh, oh, I found a painting.

Let's take a look at him.

He was.

Can you screen share?

I'm going to try.

Or Patreon.

We're trying for you, trying to get technical for you.

If I put in chat will they see this?

No, you have to do like the actual screen share we're.

Going to do this instead.

OK, Bear.

OK.

Do you see Adolf?

Is it working?

Yeah, All right.

Well, he's not a man I would have suspected, you know, would be able to eat that much.

Really.

Right.

He looks like a short.

Guy though, but like you can kind of, yeah, right.

You can.

Well, yeah, right there.

They show a little.

It's got a little.

But not like pastry.

Yeah, yeah.

He seems to just have a dad bod of sorts.

Not doing too hard here.

Oh my gosh.

Oh.

That poor guy.

Well, I mean, he was happy for a little while and then he was miserable because I we all know that feeling right when you overeat.

Or cheat.

Yeah.

When?

You know you're not supposed to have the pastries.

Yep, that's me.

All right.

Well.

Are you ready for this next segment I like to call gold gum disease and French fire fail?

Oh my gosh, yes.

We've covered duels and digestion, but what about doctors?

Oh, we know.

Medicine during the Baroque period was basically like just trying shit out, fuck around and find out, and then violent.

And if you were rich, even worse because you could actually afford the experimental cures.

Yeah, sometimes.

That was even worse.

Well, yeah, it's about to toe daf.

For example, Alexandra de Albane Dilbane, a 17th century French noble who suffered from epilepsy.

His court physician convinced him that gold had healing properties, so naturally they melted down gold coins and made him drink the liquid metal.

Guess what happened?

He died almost instantly, as you can imagine, from severe burns to his throat and stomach, internal hemorrhaging, his organs literally cooked from the inside out.

Oh my gosh.

That reminds me of Game of Thrones, that episode with yeah the the gold.

I wonder if they got that from Good.

Question.

Well, there was another historical event and I guess was it before or after this?

But that that was like a a punishment for a very high up royal.

And it's like, if you want gold, you'll get gold.

And.

They made him like they've pried his mouth open and then they, and I think if I'm remembering this correctly, there's a museum that has the melted portion that entered his body and it shows.

Like.

I should try to look and I don't know who that was.

I don't remember who it was, but I remember seeing the piece and it looks crazy.

You can see where it exploded and like.

This would be pretty fucking terrible.

This might be one of the worst ways to die.

Yeah, we're like, I mean, it is for this purpose.

But yeah.

Oh.

Man, that'd be so painful.

Well, continuing on with some medical type stuff, this next one is the tragic case of Sigmund von Birkin, a German Baroque poet who died during a dental procedure.

Now when I say dentist in quotes, we really mean the guy with the pliers and no boundaries back in the 1600s.

And poor von Birkin had a bad molar.

His Barber, who was also a surgeon, because that's what they did at the time.

They doubled as both right Tried to remove it for him.

He broke off the tooth at the root and jammed a metal pick into Sigmund's jaw, but it went a little bit too far.

So this resulted in blood infection, a jaw fracture and septic shock and this guy suffer for a week and died.

Oh my gosh, I can't imagine.

It's almost like you should have just left the cavity, you know, like just deal with the cavity in this situation.

Oh my.

Yeah, also teeth and mouth stuff bothers me a.

Lot.

Me too.

Some kind of nightmares about that one for a while now.

This next one.

What would we be doing this episode justice if we didn't have someone setting themselves on fire?

Oh no.

So welcome Madame Francois de la Balm, a French aristocrat who tragically perished in 1731 because of flammable beauty standards.

She was hosting the salon Full wig, full gown, full candlelight ambience.

A servant behind her got a little bit too close and her wig dusted with flammable powder.

Poof ignited.

The flame spread from the wig to the dress, which was also highly flammable, and she burned to death in front of her guests.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

And, and I don't know if listeners know this, but the wigs at the time were made of combination of like horsehair and they have grease and all kinds of like everything about the wig at that time was highly, highly flammable, so.

Yeah, and that stuff does not come off easy.

They couldn't get into it easy.

I mean, there's a reason why it took them hours to get ready for a special event.

Yeah, so you can imagine what that would be like.

I think back to the circus episode with the melt melting wax.

Yeah, not good.

No.

And then this one is for my book lovers out there, Blair included.

This one is also a bit of a macabre public service announcement.

So let's introduce Count Giovanni Maria della Torre, an Italian aristocrat and scholar from the late 1600s.

A man of books, a man of letters, a man crushed by his own intellect.

So in 1688, the Count was reorganizing his massive private library and insisted on doing it himself.

Apparently he had a very particular way that he like things to be done.

And I can relate to that too, a little bit.

He's like, nobody touches my fancy books.

I'm going to, nobody's going to put their fingers on my fancy books.

So he climbed a ladder to get to like a high point on one of the shelves, lost his balance and the entire bookcase, which would have been really fucking heavy at that time was which was filled with like leather bound books and encyclopedias.

And all those things came toppling down and the entire structure collapsed and the books just pummeled him and pummeled him and he until he was completely buried by the books.

By the time his staff dug him out, he was dead.

His ribs were crushed, he had a fractured skull, paper cuts, you name it.

Oh my gosh, you know what's funny you brought this up?

Because before we started recording.

I'm actually redoing my bookshelves right now.

Are you?

I am and I'm the same way.

It's like nobody took my shelves because I'm going to restructure.

Whoa, that's interesting.

Yeah, it's.

Is it mounted to the wall?

No.

So if you don't hear from me by tomorrow, will you let me know?

Yeah, see if you hear.

Let me somebody know.

Yeah, it's over with.

I I survived.

So yeah, this is a little bit of a shorter episode, but what did we, what did we learn on this edition?

And I feel like there are a lot of similarities that have been running through the various eras.

But I take away, if you're going to eat pastries, stop at like 10 or 12.

Maybe don't hit that 14 mark.

If you're going to challenge someone to a duel, mind your fashion sense.

Don't wear a long Cape and definitely don't deal with a rusty fork.

And if someone says hey try out this new medical care, you should drink some molten hot gold, Maybe don't do that either.

No, no at all.

You know what?

We didn't see an animal one this time, so that we've gotten out of the pattern.

What do?

You mean we can probably fix that real fast?

'Cause I was like, oh, we have a new strain of ones.

We're going to add up what our favorites are at the end.

Let's see what we can find.

You find one.

Yeah, I did.

Oh my gosh, OK, I can't wait to hear.

I keep finding stuff about music, but it's not.

I feel like we had a similar one.

OK, so this one is the curious case of, I'm going to say maybe Peter's, how it's pronounced Pyotr, PYOTR.

OK.

The first diplomat during the reign of Peter the Great of Russia, one of his diplomats, often unnamed in historical records, met an unexpectedly gruesome and ironic end.

This unfortunate nobleman, who was known for his vanity and disdain for rural life, was travelling to attend courtly duties when he was attacked by a large horsefly while passing through the countryside.

In a fit of panic and fury, the diplomat began thrashing about, trying to kill the fly.

According to accounts from the time, he struck himself in the head repeatedly with the butt of his ornate riding crop, one heavy blow reportedly causing him to fall off of his horse, fracturing his skull on a rock, and he died hours later from internal bleeding and head trauma because of a fucking horse fly.

What the I mean I thought I was bad with spiders but that takes that cake away.

Tell Ty that the night like, don't you think that's a little much?

Like is it really that scary?

Be like, well, Lisa, I wasn't theater.

I hope this one is true too, this next one, because you can't have, you can't not have a bird incident.

All right, so Louis de Bourbon, count of Soy Songs, a French nobleman and patron of the arts during the broke period, reportedly died to due to an injury inflicted by his exotic pet bird, a trained eagle.

The cow, known for his obsession with rare animals and his flair for the dramatic court displays, kept several exotic pets at his estate, including an eagle that was imported from North Africa.

The bird had been trained to purge on his arm during grand entrances at garden parties and masquerade balls.

One evening, while showing off to guests, the eagle became agitated, possibly due to heavy perfumes or fireworks, and the bird lashed out, sinking its talons deep into the count's shoulder and tearing through an artery in his neck.

Despite medical attention, obviously there was not a whole lot of stuff they could do at that time for something like that.

The Count ended up getting sepsis and died within a few days.

Yeah.

Contemporary Diaries of court letter and court letters at the time described the event as both bizarre and suitably dramatic for a man of such theatrical face.

Yeah, for real.

Oh my.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, Death by bird.

Yeah.

So basically this guy like to show off his bird.

And the bird showed off.

The bird was like, yeah, oh man, I.

Had it.

Wow, wow.

So we had everything from food to medical experiments gone wrong.

We did get some animals in there.

Fashion.

Yeah, fashion.

The one thing I did not include was I didn't include any like torturer type stuff because we're going to cover that in a separate episode.

It's going to be its own episode next season.

The Baroque period, surprisingly for how artistic it was, definitely got creative in that department.

Yeah, I know there's one called the Wheel that came up and I took it out because I was like, we'll save that for later, but yeah, yeah.

Oh, the wheels bad.

They're all bad, but very gringy.

Yeah, comfortable episode.

Pair of anguish.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

So do you have a favorite from this episode?

You know, I think my favorite is the guy that tripped over his own.

Cape.

Yeah, the I just Pierce itself.

Yeah, I have a food 1 gets me.

Yeah, Food pastries.

That one gets me.

It's like that is the true definition of gluttony.

Definitely, definitely.

14 buns.

14 pastry buns.

Yeah, on top of so many fish.

Like why?

Why?

And I want to know how big they were.

Because sometimes it's like, OK, if you're getting like little bun.

But Oh yeah, we could probably look that up too.

so-called Semlas.

Semlas.

Semlas.

Either way, even if it was small, that's still.

14 small ones is still a lot.

That's like, if you think of the doughnut holes, yeah, 14 donut holes, that's still a lot, you know?

Right.

And you said they were soaked in milk.

Yeah.

Oh, they're this size of your palm and they have like cream on top too.

Oh, yummy, there is.

Oh yeah.

They look delicious but I'm like you fucking 14.

Of these death by deliciousness.

Yeah, like think of a hamburger and the the how tall it can be, how much heft it's got.

Yeah, that.

Is how?

This thing is and then on top of it it has.

Cream and fruit.

Yummy.

Well, now I want to assemble.

Not that not the worst way to go, I guess, although I'm sure it was very excruciating because if you have digestive issues, you know.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, I mean, the one guy literally exploded on the toilet.

Yeah, from the inside.

Wow.

Oh.

I can't, yeah.

Don't want to?

I've already had.

Oh.

But I want assembler.

How does that sound?

I do like cream puffs.

I like cream puffs a lot.

Delicious.

Well, on that note, I hope you, yeah, I hope you had fun listening to The Worst Ways to Die in the Baroque period.

That was pure gold, pure intended.

Pun intended.

What's our next time period?

Let's see, I believe we get into.

I can't think of the name of it off the top of my head, but it's I think it's classical period, but let me double check.

Feel like a lot of this stuff starts to run together until we get into a big shift in time, you know, in the culture and that sort of thing, right?

And OK, so it looks like it is the classical period that's next, which is kind of a the hangover from the Brook period.

I guess you could say it started right in 1750 and it went up into the very early part of the 1800s and the classical period has.

People like Mozart.

You know, and Hayden and.

Yeah.

So because of how crazy Mozart was, I feel like there's probably going to be some crazy deaths to match for sure.

There was some crazy.

Parties in the classical period.

People.

Yep.

Sure, there will be some poison poison involved.

Definitely.

Some accidental poisons too, not just the planned ones.

Yeah, that's all I have on this little Worst Ways to Die Gilded Baroque edition.

Oh.

Till next time.

Till next time.

I'm just going to keep thinking about it.

Will shock you later.

Yeah.

Until then, bye.

Bye.