The best horrible history facts ever

 Horrible Histories author Terry Deary and the stage-adaptor and actor Neal Foster got together to pick their all time favourite horrible history facts…

The perfectly horrid author of Horrible Histories Terry Dear has got together with the ghastly adaptor of Horrible Histories on stage (for the last 10 years!) Neal Foster to pick out their favourite most horrible, savage, gruesome and gross history facts. And here they are:

In the savage Stone Age, people would kill a bear and then rip open its stomach to eat the meal the bear had consumed before it was killed

Romans liked watching people killing other people - on one morning alone, 10,000 people were killed in Rome’s Coliseum just for fun

If you committed treason against the slimy Stuarts, you were hanged until you were nearly dead, your organs removed while you were still alive and then you were cut into four piecesOver 50,000 people were executed at Marble Arch when it was main place for execution in London

The Countess of Salisbury had her head chopped off - but it took 11 blows of the axe before they got it off

When Richard the Lionheart captured Cyprus, he made all the men on the island shave off their beards

King Charles I wore two shirts at his execution so people wouldn’t think he was shivering from fear

In Tudor times a cook was boiled to death in a giant cauldron because he poisoned the soup

In Saxon times, half of the population were dead before they were 25In Georgian times you could be hanged for impersonating a Chelsea Pensioner