11. The King Who Died Laughing at a Lame Joke
King Martin I of Aragon (1356 – 1410) reportedly died shortly after consuming an entire goose. Something about the fowl was foul and did not agree with him, and gave the king indigestion. So he retired to his chamber and summoned his court jester, who took his time in arriving. When he finally showed up, Martin asked him where he had been, and the jester replied: “in the next vineyard, your majesty, where I saw a young deer hanging by his tail from a tree, as if somebody had punished him for stealing figs“.
Something about that joke and the image it evoked struck the king as extremely funny. It seems that while some jokes are timeless, many others are time and culture-sensitive, and in the 15th century Aragon, deer hanging by the tail as punishment for theft were considered to be super funny. So funny, in Martin of Aragon’s case, that he laughed uncontrollably for three hours nonstop, until he finally fell out of the bed and hit the floor, dead as a doorknob.