27. The Ancient Chinese Ruler Who Became History’s First Serial Killer
Liu Pengli, a second century BC prince of Ancient China, was a member of the Han Dynasty‘s imperial family. He was also the first serial killer in recorded history. In 144 BC, Emperor Jing, Liu Pengli’s cousin, appointed him to rule the city of Jidong and its countryside. That turned out to be unfortunate for the good people of Jidong, who were governed by Pengli for the next 23 years. Among other things, Pengli liked to murder his subjects for the sheer fun of it.
The psychotic prince probably would have liked Ramsey Bolton from HBO’s Game of Thrones, because like that fictional character, Liu Pengli liked to hunt human beings for sport. A minimum of 100 people were killed by him for his amusement, and odds are that the true number of his victims was much higher. As seen below, his reign of psychotic terror lasted for over two decades, in which his subjects were too scared to come out of their homes at night.