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Howdy you history loving fuckers. I’ve just stumbled across the story of a pirate from the 19^th Centrury who had an absolutely massive pair of swinging canonballs on her. This is the story of the chinese lady who doesn’t give a fuck about your parley, because she’d rather be up to her nuts in blood and guts. It’s Ching Shih of course.

Born at the arse end of the 18^th century Ching Shih had a bit of an unfortunate start working in a brothel. But not any old brothel, it was a floating brothel in Guangzhou, the origin of boats and hoes I can only assume. She soon caught the eye of a notorious pirate who went by the name of Cheng. Ol’ Cheng’s family had been in the pirate game a looong time since the mid-17^th century and was pretty well established. Ching Shih was a bit of a smart cookie and had a contract written up when they got hitched that gave her 50% control of Chengs pirating empire. At the start of the 19^th century Cheng kicked the filthy mop bucket and took a trip to Davey Jones. So Ching Shih started the hustle making the right friends and made her way to the top. She held control by laying down the law with a few strict rules. One for example was that anyone gives an order that didn’t come from her, they lose their head… on the fucking spot… O-Ren Ishii from Kill Bill style. Then there was the usual quartering, canonballs tied to the legs and swim, etc etc. You get the jist.

Her general technique was to roll in to a coastal village, behead a fuck load of people and take the rest to sell in to slavery. She really was chopping necks and cashing cheques. She took on the British empire, Portugese navy and the Ching dynasty gave them a fucking ass kicking and took their ships. She was on a 2007 Britney Spears style rampage. To give you an idea of how massive her fucking squad was, it’s estimated that she had 20,000 to 40,000 pirates in her fleet. Their eye patch bill was through the fucking roof.

Her later life turned a bit strange, she had the government dissolve her relationship with her son so she could marry him. For tax purposes right? Nah, they had a child too. Dirty fuckers. Anyway, she ended up going full circle and opened her own brothel in her retirement after she managed to secure a pretty sweet truce where only a couple hundred of her pirated got fucked over.

All in all a pretty successful pirate career.

While watching Silence Of The Lambs over the Halloween period I started thinking about the dinghy portrayal of damp asylum basements portrayed in films reserved for the most heinously psychotic members of public that didn’t manage to land a job in corporate upper management. I assumed the inspiration must have stemmed from the real asylums of the late 1800s where they stuck anyone caught screaming weather reports at pigeons or wanking too much. In my search I came across a particularly remarkable woman called Nellie Bly. This is the tale of the woman who got up to her ovaries in the stinking broth of a Victorian asylum to expose the horror that they contained.

Nellie Bly was born in 1864 and although I refer to her with her pen name her real name was Elizabeth Seaman. She was an American journalist and a pretty fucking bad ass one at that. She got her start in journalism after responding to a bullshit article in her local paper that said women were just baby machines, she of course took offence and the editor was so impressed at her eloquently written “fuck you” that he offered her a job. For her greatest move (potentially, she did something else pretty amazing I’ll get to later) she essential created a whole new form of investigative journalism by pulling off some real Sacha Baron Cohen shit going undercover, having herself declared insane and having a court send her to an insane asylum to see what the fuck was going on there. Her book she wrote from this entitled “Ten Days In A Mad House” which detailed the horrific conditions that she witnessed first hand was of course a success. If someone did that today I’d sure as fuck read it!

So… how did you go about getting yourself declared mad as a women in Victorian times? Well that’s easy, she simply booked herself in to a boarding house (that’s an old school AirBnB) and told the owners that she thought they were crazy and didn’t want to go to sleep. Boom. She was in an asylum faster than you can say “The government are using tiny satellite dishes in my teeth to find out what toothpaste I use”. Several doctors assessed her and declared her “undoubtedly insane” noting a “wild haunted look in her eyes”. Once she was in the asylum she was acting normal again which they then described her normal behaviour as symptoms of her mental illness, even when she pleaded to be released they said it was a sign of her madness. So she was pretty well fucked at this point.

They would beat anyone who wasn’t playing ball and if they became too wild they would tie the particularly mental patients together which even in those times they must have realised it was a bad idea to create some sort of mentally unstable rat king (Google ‘rat king’, the pictures are far more disturbing than any description I could make). They fed the patients with gruel and rotten beef, which normally people would only eat rotten meat from a kebab shop at 3am. One of the most horrific and sadly expected parts of the story was that she soon realised that many of the women in the asylum with her were just as sane as she was. Fortunately she had the foresight to arrange with a well known newspaper to spring her after 10 days which she was pretty stoked about, but obviously gutted that so many sane women were essentially stuck there being tortured. However this all led to a court case that made the requirement of mental assessments to be more thorough and produced a big government investment in these kind of institutions.

This wasn’t just a 15 minutes of fame for Nellie either, what is potentially more impressive is that she pulled a leaf out of Jules Verne’s novel and did a trip around the world in only 72 days! She travelled alone for the vast majority of the journey and managed to set a world record for fastest circumnavigation of the globe. Just for the whip cream and cherry on top, she actually met Jules Verne while going through France and for some fucking reason bought a monkey in Singapore… because, well why the fuck not.

It’s been a while, but I’m back here to break off a little chunk of history for you. Have you ever though you have such terrible luck? Well I’ve got a little perspective for you while we dive in to look at some of the unluckiest cunts in history.

First off, let me take you back to the near past of 1954 where we find a particularly unfortunate woman by the name of Ann Elizabeth Fowler Hodges. Now we all know the terror of a thud followed by a cold clammy trickle of seagull shit oozing down your neck, but Elizabeth suffered a different kind of aerial attack. Unbeknownst to Elizabeth millennia before even the idea of her existence, a chuck of space rock started it’s long patient trip with plans to absolutely ruin Elizabeth’s day. As far as long cons go this meteorite (known as the Sylacauga meteorite) is the fucking don. So what heinous thing was Elizabeth up to when the rock came a knocking? Just having a fucking nap on the sofa, the lazy bitch! Then, yeah you guessed it, BOOOM! Do you smell what the rock is cooking? Straight through her roof at mach 3, and demolished her fucking pelvis like a Latin lover who spent the day snorting amphetamines and popping Viagra. She did survive and joined a club of people you could count of one had that have been hit by a meteorite. I’ll take bird shit over a flying space rock to the dick any day.

Next up lets cruise all the way back to 564BC to check on a fellow called Arrhichion, famous for being an Olympic champion. He was all in all pretty lucky as he was at the 54^th Olypic games defending his title in a event called the Pankratiasts. Which is basically a mix of boxing and wrestling, aka a fucking punch up. So he was there again absolutely smashing cunts left right and centre until there was only one bad mother fucker left standing in the way of his victory. I’m pretty certain from what I’ve read that they used to do this naked so you can picture it like someone miss-aimed at an orgy and it’s escalated to fists. So his competitor had his legs wrapped around Arrichion and was choking him with his hands, it wasn’t looking good for the champ. Fortunately Arrichion made like a disgruntled donkey and stomped the fuckers toes breaking them. Which, again fortunately, made his opponent give the sign of defeat. Unfortunately, at the same time broke Arrichion’s fucking neck killing him instantly. But there is a happy ending! Because the opponent gave the sign of defeat first, the judges declared Arrichion’s corpse the winner. I’m sure a gold medal would have really complimented his blue lips…

One more tale of misfortune I think should do us. Lets move a little forward in time to 260BC for the battle of Changping where we meet an unlucky bastard by the name of Zhao Kuo. He was an army commander in ancient China that kind of got the job because his dad was a bad ass General. However, when his dad was on his death bed… He was all like “Don’t let that fucking idiot command an army”, but King Xiaocheng was all like “Nah, get fucked cunt”. So he’s in charge now and looking to destroy the army that’s run by a fellow called Bai Qi. Now Bai Qi WAS a bad ass mother fucker and happened to send some spies over to Zhao to say that Bai was a fucking pussy and didn’t want to get in to a punch up with Zhao. So Zhao being a dumb fuck, he grabs 400,000 men (yeah seriously almost half a million) and goes after Bai. As he comes across Bai’s “army” there seems to be not very many of them around but Zhao is just ready to bust their skulls. They all run off and Zhao starts chasing them like kids in a playground “chase me, chase me” kind of thing. But so they can go faster he just says lets leave all the supplies here. Dumb move Zhao. Then Zhao gets ambushed by 550,000 soldiers! He is waaaay fucked at this point and tries to run, but obviously they have no supplies now and you didn’t just pop to McDonald’s for 400,000 happy meals back in those days. So they hide in a fortress and damn near starved to death. Then Bai rocks up for them to surrender and he takes the reasonable approach of burying 400,000 people alive. What a fucking psycho.