Some of these are new to me. I didn’t know that Anne Frank’s R-rated diary was expurgated by her dad, and I didn’t know that Warren Harding called his penis “Jerry.”
In doing a little fact-checking on this, I found that Mr. and Mrs. Seinfeld named their little future comedian after Warren Harding’s dick, which was probably their favorite Presidential cock at the time, until Johnson’s Johnson came along.
If you ever get a chance, I recommend visiting the rarely-seen back side of Mr. Rushmore, where the greatest Presidential penis heads are carved. The four exhibits are Harding’s famous Jerry, Johnson’s famous Johnson, Clinton’s famous bent penis and Richard Nixon’s full and entirely clothed body, representing possibly the greatest Presidential dickhead of them all.
Trump’s dick head is not in the official exhibit, but there are mushrooms growing in the crevices.
I don’t recall being taught any R-rated history facts in school. At least not by the teachers.
I was curious about what happened to the man who beat Pope John VII to death when he caught the Pope in bed with his wife. Manslaughter is the killing of a person while in the heat of passion upon sudden and adequate provocation. Finding your spouse in bed with another person is the example of “sudden and adequate provocation,” most often cited when teaching the law of manslaughter. Of course, I really have no idea if 8th-century Italian law had the concept of manslaughter. However, when I started googling Pope John VII, I didn’t find anything about him being beaten to death. Wikipedia didn’t say how he died, and PopeHistory.com said he most likely died of natural causes. I suppose being killed by the jealous husband of the woman you are having sex with is a somewhat natural consequence of sleeping with a married woman, but being beaten to death isn’t generally understood to be death by natural causes. However, “linkiest.com” is such a prestigious well respected journalistic institution it’s hard to believe they would publish such a story without having strong evidence to support the allegation.
What should we believe?
I think they got their Roman numerals crossed – with a V instead of an X. They seem to be referencing John XII, not VII. John XII was a man of notoriously poor character. On the other hand, the article also mentions the death of XII, so the author is not actually confusing them.
I’m not sure where the author got the facts on VII, who seems to have been appropriately holy, more or less. He is not listed among the sexually active popes. Possible further confusion arises from that fact that another John with a very similar Roman numeral (VIII) was beaten to death, but by his own subordinates, not a jealous husband. In the century or so between 870 and 990, a high percentage of popes were murdered for one reason or another. Perhaps papicide was a popular sport at the time.
The circumstances of the death of John XII seem to be historical, and are referenced in the footnote here. The observers of the time agree that he died as the result of an adulterous act, but they disagree on the agent of his death. The husband story is as logical as the one about apoplexy, and certainly far more sensible that the suggestion that he was struck dead by Satan. (It seems to me that the devil would wholeheartedly approve of John’s actions, and would want him to stay alive so he could continue to defile the papacy. I think it would make more sense for the superstitious to say that ol’ Jackie Dozen was struck dead by a disapproving God. Then again, theology is not my strong suit.)