A History of Killing Like Gentlemen

For the bonus episode this week, Francis did some research (dicked around on Wikipedia) and learned about the time honored tradition of getting pissed off and shooting someone. While the 1800s were a little more gentlemanly than how we do it now, it was no less insane.

Take, for example, the French. We have two stories of Frenchmen deciding that using guns to shoot each other is too pedestrian. First we have two men fighting for the affections of a woman. Both liked the IDEA of guns, but the execution of a duel needed to be grander. So they got into balloons, went half a mile up, and shot blunderbusses at each other. Somehow the first shot missed, but a second didn't. No word on how laid killing a man in a balloon gets you.

The second Frenchmen being incredibly French is a barroom brawl. Well, today it would be a brawl but in the 1840s, Paris was a place of sophistication and grace. Which is why after an argument two men squared off to throw billiard balls at each other. Much like with pistols, all it took was one lucky shot of a ball cracking a man's skull to kill one of the duelers.

If you want to hear more, the episode is available on our Patreon